The Sun Ra Arkestra's Maestro Hits One Hundred
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
My favorites are a bit later – Lanquidity (1978) and Sleeping Beauty (1979).
A good start might be the lone release on Savoy, The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra (1962) – China Gates is such a hypnotic jam.
Thanks for the recommendation. I put this on and was floored by recognising the opening bars from a sample in an old Mo' Wax record[0]. Formative sounds for me.
This is a good read on Saturn: https://londonjazzcollector.wordpress.com/2021/07/09/beginne...
He had a lot of early recordings that had no distribution and were only sold at live shows, and he was known for recording everything he ever did even if some are pretty lofi.
But all the popular recordings are available as repressings, and you can find plenty affordably new online or used at discogs.
I’ve never found any Sun Ra in the $2 Goodwill bins but I’ve found plenty of other great jazz records there.
The most amazing part were the solos. Sun Ra would point to each player in turn and each would stand and deliver the most blistering solo for about 5 minutes each, barely taking a breath. Then Sun Ra would motion to the next and this would continue until everyone had a turn.
The music was incredibly spacey and so good. "Space is the place"!
We'd get to class, he'd tell us what song to pull out, and he'd just start us off like normal. Plod along, get to the usual solo section and the person slated to perform the solo does their own thing, but the director doesn't allow us out of those looped bars. Nope, without telling us, he points to the next person and has them solo. Then the next. Then the next.
Suddenly, we've reached the end of class and he finally lets us move on and finish the song after tons of people got a chance to work on their improv.
Yeah, we were in middle school and weren't top notch musicians or anything, but those still remain some of my favorite musical experiences.
For anyone interested in something similar, check out Shibusashirazu Orchestra from Japan. Very similar performance of a conductor, lots of solos, dancers, etc.
My friend credits that as being the last straw for him pursuing his own professional music career. "If Sun Ra still has to argue about getting paid, at his level of fame, then this business ain't it."
Sun Ra still lives on through music just like Prince and other strange experimentalists of that mark.
Amazing to be alive at that age, to be touring and rocking it, that's another level.
I grew up as a music-mad kid in the Philly metro region, and a friend of mine and a fellow music fan somehow got the phone number for the Arkestra group home where Sun Ra and a bunch of the band members lived. It was in my wallet for a few months and I told myself the next time I hit the city, I'd call the number and ask to speak to Sun Ra while it was a local call.
So one night I call the number and this gruff voice says "Hello?" and I say, "Hello, I'd like to speak to Sun Ra" and this voice that I immediately recognized as that of John Gilmore, the sax player, yells at me "Go to bed, white boy!" and hangs up on me. Me and my friend, who was on an extension, burst out laughing...
https://open.spotify.com/track/6Ys8eavDzCLC4CjwN8pAUP?si=1d5...
For example, he objected to the late, great, Carla Bley, being in the Guild because she was a woman!
“In one meeting, Sun Ra said aloud to all the members of the group that I would sink the ship because that’s what women do. I was furious. I got up and said, ‘You son of a…’ I really yelled at him.”
https://thequietus.com/interviews/carla-bley-interview/
Another quote: "Sun Ra and I did get along from that point on."
I mean, he evoked sailor superstition to claim women were bad luck on a ship. Talk about old-fashioned.
As far out as the music was, everything about him was fabricated, but music and mystique aside, it’s still disappointing to again see an African-American man contributing to the marginalization of women, a long tradition that ought to be understood just as well as the contribution to culture.