Sun Ra in Chronological Order: An Arkestra Listening Thread + Related Solar Sounds

wow, that version of "deep purple" with stuff smith from 1948 is so good. it has a lovely, meandering melancholy sound. stuff smith is good!

This is a great thread, I'll be here for the ride.

(also ty for spotify playlist km!)

no prob! i just hope no one skips ahead of the thread and thinks that the next songs on the playlist represent the correct order! i'm just kinda searching for songs that I think will be upcoming and adding them in the generally correct area of the playlist, but as the thread progresses I'll keep adjusting things to match it.

the solo church recording from 1948 youtube posted above is really good, too. in the midst of these more traditional sessions with other musicians, it shows that he was already interested in going on cosmic voyages in his own work

more youtube links:

Andy Tibbs Dozier Boys with Sax Malllard's Combo + Sun Ra on piano, recorded nov 1948, released dec 1948: In a Traveling Mood (just the first song)
Andy Tibbs & the Dozier Boys + Sun Ra on piano, recorded nov 1948, released jan 1949: In Every Man's Life

Dozier Boys with Eugene Wright + Sun Ra on piano and arrangements, recorded dec 1948, released Sept 1949: Music Goes Round and Round
(couldn't find "Pork n Beans" or "Dawn Mist", from the same session)

after some searching, i found the 6 tracks that Sun Ra/ Blount played on The Hawk Returns (search for "Sun31" here on the amazingly exhaustive Chicago Years link posted above: . They were included on the Confessin': The Astounding Coleman Hawkins comp, which is on Spotify.

Sun Ra studies should be a standard department at universities

Not to be too much of a party pooper, but is the idea of the thread to listen to all the stuff that's been posted so far and then discuss at some point? Or are we going to go song by song like the Billy Joel thread?

(looking forward to 1965 -- "cosmic chaos" is my jam)

xpost
not sure! personally i'd rather go release by release since there are around 125 LPs to go through, not even counting other releases.

i'm not trying to be dismissive but i guess i just don't understand your question. my idea was to post stuff and then anybody is welcome to discuss it, right? or other people can post things, too, that's fine. and also discuss them. maybe once we get to the albums it will be more straightforward. since i feel like we could manage to do a record / day, plus maybe links to archival / live / home recordings from the same period.

oh do you mean like are we going to break down the albums track-by-track? no i'm with KM, i don't want to do that. too much stuff to get through.

xpost @ moodles

all of that sounds good to me

Yep, thanks

(1978 is another banner year. lanquidity!)

i'm pretty sure that these sun ra arrangements of "call my baby" and "rebecca" by jo jo adams (rec. 1952, backed by red saunders) are the same versions as the ones available on spotify.

The pieces may both be midtempo blues in the same key, but the band is clearly reading from charts. The arrangements definitely are by Sun Ra; especially on "Call My Baby," they keep threatening to turn into early Arkestra numbers, then veer temporarily back to the usual formulae. The arrangements are not just remarkable in their own right; they show Sun Ra's "far out" style emerging from its chrysalis. Our thanks to the late Otto Flückiger for careful listening to these sides.

(campbell et al.)

sorry, 1952

errrr 1953 ****

also yeah "lanquidity" rules!

wow there are 1953 sessions with Coleman Hawkins! I'm diving into that crazy "Sonny Blount To Sun Ra" link now

Maybe a couple of days per album...

not a chance! buckle up, pal!

got the jo jo adams, thanks!

and yeah, i'm enjoying the coleman hawkins stuff a lot too. i think the only stuff i've heard with him as a leader is Night Hawk, so it's really cool to get another view of his sound from earlier in the 50s. Blount on the keys is a nice bonus!

also it looks like this comp is the way to go if you want to hear the space trio + other early home recordings. so if any of you heads want to dig into it and then report back, that'd be cool. there's also a discogs review (posted, apparently, by the same person who made a number of the 78rpm youtube videos we've linked to) purporting that the compiler was too speculative re: whether SR is actually the sideman, so it looks like the mystery only deepens the deeper you dig:

https://img.discogs.com/XiHykR2372o7dKLxXBqg5Mu-WjY=/fit-in/312x498/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-3282915-1403207320-7971.jpeg.jpg

14 x CD !!!

it's been linked to a few times upthread, but esp. while we're still in this era this is such a great resource: http://campber.people.clemson.edu/sunra.html

just wanted to make sure no one misses it because it's one of those links that you can easily spend an entire evening reading through

highly recommended reading

that entire website is great. the sun ra page is just one of many exhaustive biographies/discographies of musicians of the era. all put together by robert campbell, psychology professor at clemson university. thanks robert campbell!

https://i.imgur.com/lwwa6lT.jpg

btw for those without spotify, there's a lot of stuff on bandcamp. here's a recent A Guide to the Many Sun Ra Albums Now Available on Bandcamp

https://i.imgur.com/qd4Mpp0.jpg

church organ recordings are amazing.

may I suggest we spend approx. 1 week listening/posting/talking per calendar year, with this first week devoted to pre-Sun Song recordings i.e everything before 1956?

I like "Dig This Boogie". His piano already had an aggressive overabundance, like it was trying to stretch beyond the boundaries of the blues.

sleeve: the more i think about, the more i think it would be less stressful to organize this thread by year. i had a sort of release-focused approach in mind, but just coming to the thread and saying "okay, 1957 this week. here's this stuff i know is from this year. what else do we know is out there? and how do we feel about it?" -- that's both less stressful for me and also encourages more thread participation i think.

and then in terms of how much time we allot for discussion, probably somewhere between 3-5 days seems right to me (WilliamC, i was only joking, sorry if that didn't come across!)

but of course that's going to depend on how much stuff there is to listen to, and also of course i'd like to give people the opportunity to listen, formulate thoughts, express them, link to articles even, or point out live / archival material from the same year that was missed, etc. so maybe a week is better. i'm honestly not sure.

how does everybody else feel? i've been off from work for a week, so my sense of free time might be skewed.

i'd guess that everyone is going to prefer a different timeline. personally i prefer a brisker pace, so i'm going ahead into the 60s because i've already listened to all the 1950s material that i can get my hand on, several times over. but i'll still look forward to circling back and taking a deeper dive into each year as the thread progresses!

and actually, maybe a more useful suggestion is to just be flexible. i'm guessing that some years of sun ra's life will be more filled with music and other ephemera to absorb than others, so there's nothing wrong with adjusting the rollout accordingly!

okay. for sleeve i'll wait until monday to post about "jazz by sun ra" and the rest of '56. after that i'll post every few days and adjust according to what's going on in the thread and how much material there is to cover.

right now i'm reading szwed, the campbell discography, and the essays in the '96 2xCD singles comp (came across a copy by chance last night in a record store). '55 coming tonight.

that Singles comp is so essential. can anyone tell me about Vol. 2?

i think that art yard broke the vinyl release into two volumes, each three discs.

other than that it looks like the 2016 art yard 3xCD release covers 1952-1991 (while the evidence 1996 2xCD only does 1955-1982). since there were no singles recorded before 1955, it looks like art yard included home recordings in addition to newly-discovered releases + intended releases that never made it, most of which were made available on this atavistic comp from 2003

there are also the norton compilations, which break the singles material up into discs that seem to be more about a "theme" or something:

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-And-His-Arkestra-Interplanetary-Melodies/release/2166326
https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-And-His-Arkestra-Rocket-Ship-Rock/release/2206168
https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-And-His-Arkestra-The-Second-Stop-Is-Jupiter/release/2195244

actually it looks like the atavistic comp is rehearsals, not shelved releases. but i think that "demo" is sometimes used as a synonym on some of these singles releases. and since SR was recording basically everything at the time, and clearly intended to self-release his music, it's unclear to me whether the recorded material was intended more as a reference for the musicians than as something to shop around to labels or whatever else.

szwed on ra's recording habits (p. 73):

When he heard about a new kind of tape recorder, once which recorded on paper-backed tape for a half hour at a stretch, he bought one, an Ampex. He began recording everything he could, rehearsals, performances, even the Calumet City gigs. In fact, he sometimes played all twelve hours of the strip show without a break so that he could play and record every piece they did. His habit of documenting all his work became legendary among musicians in Chicago. Those who played with him later said that "if you worked for him for three years, you could say that you made 700 records."

one**

1955

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/1955arkestra.jpg

in 1954 sun ra got his first club gig with members of his experimental band, billed as LE SONYR RA & HIS COMBO and performing at the vincennes lounge. the next year they played the parkway terrace and thereafter cadillac bob's birdland. it was also in 1955 that john gilmore and julian priester became permanent members of the arkestra (although it wouldn't be called that until 1956, and even then the name was arkistra; the name as we now know it appeared in 1957). alton abraham had established himself as sunny's patron, relieving him of the need to perform ceaselessly in strip clubs and allowing him more time to develop his own music. (alton was also on his way to becoming director of saturn records.) from an arkestral perspective, 1955 might be most important as a time when ra was writing, copyrighting tunes, and working those tunes out on at rehearsals (5 days a week / 8 hours a day !!) and at gigs. the new sound was emerging, and efforts were being made to document it:

When the band opened at Cadillac Bob's basement club, Wilburn Green was playing what Sunny quaintly called the "electronic bass" and Gilmore's old Air Force buddy Art Hoyle had become the Arkestra's main trumpeter. We are able to hear their efforts because Alton Abraham, his brother Artis, and Sun Ra had put together a new company called Saturn Records and found some capital, and the new label booked time at RCA Studios.

...which we'll get around to when we head into 1956! for now, the recorded efforts of 1955:

1. the nu sounds, "foggy day" (released as a 45 in 1983)

http://matsgus.com/discaholic_corner/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/a-foggy-day1.jpg
listen on youtube

According to Alton Abraham, the Nu Sounds, led by Roland Williams, were one of the vocal groups being coached by Sun Ra. Location (Club Evergreen in Chicago) from Abraham and Robert Pruter; Club Evergreen was on North Clybourn Street. (On other occasions, Abraham attributed this side to a later vocal group, the Cosmic Rays; the source of the confusion is that Sunny had the Nu Sounds and the Rays record the same tunes, then picked the version he liked better to release. This policy applied not only to Ra's vocal compositions but also to some of the standards that he arranged for vocal groups.)

Besides the competing recordings by the Nu Sounds and the Cosmic Rays, a further source of confusion has been that Sun Ra's interest in vocal groups came and went. It was intense in 1954 and 1955, quickly vanished once the Arkestra began recording on its own in 1956, then returned in 1958-1960. The known studio recordings of Ra's vocal groups are from the later period, even though he was rehearsing with some of the same performers in the earlier period.

(campbell et al.)

2. sun ra w/ wilbur bare, "can this be love?" (released on the LP "deep purple" in 1973)

http://vf-images.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/deep-purple.jpeg
listen on youtube

3. rehearsals / home recordings with the nu sounds and the lintels, first made available on the 2003 atavistic CD "spaceship lullaby"

http://www.sunraarkestra.com/sunradisco/covers/1.jpg

if i'm not mistaken, much of this was also made available on the norton singles comps (linked above), and the art yard singles comp from 2016 (which is available on spotify). i don't have copies of the norton, atavistic, or art yard comps, so i don't have access to the liner notes and i'm unsure which recordings belong here. perhaps somebody else does.

4. two arrangements for the red saunders band w/ billy brooks on vocals

http://images.45worlds.com/f/78/billy-brooks-mambo-is-everywhere-duke-78.jpg
listen on youtube

http://images.45cat.com/billy-brooks-i-want-your-love-tonight-duke.jpg
listen on youtube

1955 also saw Sunny's last recorded efforts as an arranger for the Red Saunders band. Although many of Red's regulars would remain in the band until the Club DeLisa closed in February 1958, and some stayed with him beyond that, R&B was trending toward rock and roll and record companies were beginning to see Saunders' band as dated.

(campbell et al.)

5. rehearsal recordings of the "treasure hunt trio" doing two takes of a sonny title called "of this i know" + two standards. as far as i know this material is only available on the transparency 14xCD "eternal myth revealed vol, 1" linked above.

6. unissued acetate, now owned by robert campbell. there's an interesting article about that here:

http://united-mutations.blogspot.com/2010/11/sun-ra-acetate-from-1955.html

i don't have copies of the norton, atavistic, or art yard comps, so i don't have access to the liner notes and i'm unsure which recordings belong here.

the discogs entry for the art yard comp (also conveniently the one on spotify) includes the recording date information: https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-Singles-The-Definitive-45s-Collection-19521991/release/9226540

one that belongs in the 1954/55 era is "Chicago USA":

“Chicago USA,” a strange tone poem to Sun Ra’s adopted city, was also recorded with local vocal group the Lintels and submitted in a contest to become the city’s official theme song. It didn’t win, but still stands as a fine tribute to the city and especially to the South Side, rattling off the stop names of an old Loop-bound Green Line train: Jackson Park, University, Cottage Grove.

i have to admit there's a special thrill in listening to this song - when sun ra first moved here he lived in washington park, which is on the other side of the park i live next to here in chicago. i take my dog out to washington park just about every day! next time i take the green line downtown, i know which song to cue up.

the Art Yard singles comp info for "Chicago USA" says "Home recording, Chicago, between 1952 and 1962.", rather unhelpfully, but the Clemson page says it was a rehearsal in either 54 or 55?

same deal with "Spaceship Lullaby": home recording, either 54 or 55, available on the Art Yard singles comp

get in here, rushomancy :)

did he ever return to the doo-wop/vocal group motifs later on? all I can think of that even comes close is "Nuclear War" which is not really the same thing

also everyone plz post lots of crazy homemade Saturn LP cover pics so I can drool over them

i _loved_ the singles comp when it came out in '96

it had all the weird oddball stuff in one place

which you can't get nowadays. there's so much more oddball stuff and it's impossible to keep track of. which cds have "spaceship lullaby"? which cd has "baby won't you please be mine"? which versions of "i'm gonna unmask the batman" are on which cds? who the hell knows.

according to the article that keeps showing up in the thread he had two phases of doo-wop, the first from '54-'55 and the second from '59-'60

but the doo-wop was clearly the predecessor of the space chants, which were part and parcel of his work throughout his career, even if you don't get those sweet harmonies on "i'm gonna unmask the batman" (is "i'm gonna unmask the batman" the best sun ra song? yes.)

when was "the space stroll" by don "dino" dean recorded? why was it recorded? who is don "dino" dean? what is "tony's wife" and why is it? why did the qualities suck so bad?

so many questions.

spending some more time with the Singles tracks that got added to that playlist (thanks Karl!), I have the 2CD on Evidence and the liner notes are great, like most/all of their CDs? but man this "Calling All Demons"/"Demon's Lullaby" single is blowing me away, it's not on the original Evidence one but it is on the newer Strut triple CD.

some observations on looking through Discogs - damn Transparency has been cranking out the releases!

also: these kinds of "hybrid" releases must have driven collectors crazy in the pre-Discogs era

https://www.discogs.com/The-Sun-Ra-Arkestra-Primitone/release/4896811

Occurred to me that with the size of the Ra ouevre getting thing doing chronologically will take forever to reach certain points I find most significant to me.
Not read thread through but did think doing something like this with separate threads per decade might be more conducive to getting to the bits I'm most interested in. Or is the 60s, 70s and early 80s stuff too heavily covered elsewhere anyway.

I was listening to the Singles set yesterday and did enjoy the first disc but its the electric stuff that really connects with me.

I've never listened to the singles collection before and it's on [streaming site]. Will check it out later, totally into Futuristic Sounds of .. today. It's just so perfect and swings so hard.

what's next?

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/other-voices-other-blues

Recorded in Rome, Italy, January 1978, featuring the quartet of Sun Ra (keyboards); Michael Ray (trumpet); John Gilmore (tenor sax); and Luqman Ali (drums). No bassist. The tracks were issued on a double LP in '78.

According to notes in The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra (by Robert L. Campbell and Christopher Trent), "Sun Ra frequently used his Crumar keyboard to program repeated lines and 'drum' sequences throughout the January 1978 sessions in Italy." These sessions also produced a companion double album, "New Steps," with the identical personnel.

https://i.discogs.com/PgXPnKl0FijGYuOkcri_VKoQ77xg0p8Wj4qHSW9cY04/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI0MTM3/OTQtMTQxNDA4MzE4/OC01Njk1LmpwZWc.jpeg

another release originally on the Italian Horus label, this one I have heard and it gets way more wild than the other one

Just getting to New Steps. In 1978 Sun Ra was aware of the shadow of John Coltrane on this song and they do a nice arrangement, all their own. “Moon People” is not much but a lot of duck sounds but “Sun Steps” is lovely.

The album starts to sound like Sun Ra’s odd take on repertory with “Exactly Like You”, which is like a contrefact on “Take the A Train”. “Friend and Friendship” is nice too. Wonder if these were written for the session or improvised.

“Rome at Twilight” is funky and a lot of fun. Love the vocals on “When There is No Sun”. “The Horo” closes it out with a melancholic mood. Love Michael Ray’s Clark Terry impression about 12 minutes in.

April 1978 - Of Mythic Worlds session

https://www.discogs.com/release/1204203-Sun-Ra-Of-Mythic-Worlds
https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/of-mythic-worlds

By studying the performances on side A, eventually Campbell was able to identify the personnel. By tracking these musicians' tenures with the Arkestra and comparing personnel to known tour stops, it was determined that these three tracks — "Mayan Temples," "Over the Rainbow," and "Inside the Blues" — were probably recorded in April 1978 at The Left Bank Jazz Society in Baltimore. Portions of this concert were included in the 1980 Robert Mugge film "A Joyful Noise," which helped to identify personnel.

We covered the B-side of this already, it was recorded in 1972 for the Pathways To Unknown Worlds session.

from the Bandcamp reissue notes:
Hence, [those] two tracks have been omitted from this digital reissue; they were reassigned to the 2019 Modern Harmonic label's definitive reissue of Pathways to Unknown Worlds (available in all formats).

In place of [those] two tracks, we have included two previously unreleased medleys performed by the Sun Ra Quartet at the Moers Music Festival, West Germany, in 1979. The recording quality is excellent (these originated from a radio broadcast), the performances are relatively close in the Ra chronology, and the repertoire is compatible with the three OMW live tracks.

https://i.discogs.com/kml4urISP_uCea9uuPJ29WbS4r1VxMgf7l2sFzruFtE/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTEyMDQy/MDMtMTMyNzE3MDAz/NS5qcGVn.jpeg

another tidbit from BC:

first issued on LP in 1980 on the short-lived Philly Jazz label (PJ 1007), owned by Tom Buchler. The only other Sun Ra release on PJ was the widely acclaimed Lanquidity (1978).

oops backing up to January 1978 for the live Italian releases (Media Dreams, Disco 3000, The Sound Mirror)

MEDIA DREAMS is something of a companion to DISCO 3000, with the distinction that the recording location of the latter is known (Milan's Teatro Ciak), but the location of the former is not. DISCO 3000 is also the better-recorded tape, but MEDIA DREAMS won't disappoint Ra fans who know better than to expect Rudy Van Gelder-perfection from the Saturn catalog.

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/media-dreams-expanded

a particularly exhausting discographical mess between these LPs, here's the details:

The original 1978 Saturn LP of MEDIA DREAMS featured six works—on Side A, "Saturn Research," "Constellation," and "Yera [sic] of the Sun"; on Side B, "Media Dreams," "Twigs at Twilight," and "An Unbeknowneth Love." Almost 30 years later, additional concert tapes surfaced, which provided the British label Art Yard with enough material for a 13-track 2-CD set, issued in 2008. When Art Yard's license expired after 2020, the rights reverted to Sun Ra LLC, and this digital release is the current iteration of the set. There are minor differences.

The later tape discoveries revealed that the Saturn track "Twigs at Twilight," featuring torching tenor work from John Gilmore, was in fact an excerpt of Ra's evergreen "Images" (a work which dated from his late 1950s Chicago period). For this 2022 digital reissue, "Twigs" (which was included on the Art Yard CD) is replaced by the complete "Images." "An Unbeknowneth Love" was abridged on the Saturn LP; this abridged version as well as the later-discovered full version were both included on the Art Yard CD. We have included just the full version. "Of Other Tomorrows Never Known" originally appeared on the Saturn LP SOUND MIRROR; Art Yard added it to their 2-CD set, and we followed suit. Finally, "Space is the Place" and a brief opening passage of "The Shadow World" were listed as two tracks on the Art Yard CD, but they were performed inseparably and are here listed as a medley.

Having conquered Italy, less than a week after this frenetic intercontinental expedition, Ra was back performing in the U.S.

the original Saturn LPs feature an especially varied batch of handmade covers, see here:
https://www.discogs.com/master/143594-Sun-Ra-And-His-Arkestra-Media-Dreams

https://i.discogs.com/MsllQJEk2a7ElcIxTWWpnUzxjISYdQpSAVB_Ly1OkbE/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:596/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI4NjIx/MTAtMTY0NzUyMDQ1/MC00ODYxLmpwZWc.jpeg