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

1959

hey everyone, me and budo jeru are going to tag team this for a while. i’m going to do 1959 today, and then 1960 sometime this week. i am winging it, so if i miss something important please help fill in the gaps. as with the rest of this thread so far, a lot of the quotes and information come from
http://campber.people.clemson.edu/sunra.html and http://www.sunraarkestra.com/sunradisco/list.php. i don’t know what we’re going to do when we reach the end of the chicago years (around 1960-61) and the scope of the clemson guy’s research expires, but for now, it seems to be pretty authoritative (he often identifies

as always, don’t forget there’s a spotify playlist that evolves along with this thread. it lines up with this thread as things are posted, and then anything on it that’s beyond the thread is just kind of a non-comprehensive hodgepodge of upcoming material that might not be in the proper order yet.

1. Jazz in Silhouette (Recorded March 6,1959; Released May 1959)

https://i.imgur.com/027hPDl.jpg

Jazz in Silhouette originally had a silk-screened cover, attributed to one "H. P. Corbissero," with an abstract design and the title (variants can be seen in Geerken and Hefele's Omniverse Sun Ra, and in Pathways to Unknown Worlds, p. 46). Copies are known in pinkish red and black and in golden brown and black. John Corbett has suggested that the silk-screen design was done by Ra himself.

In 1961, Saturn was ready for another pressing run from RCA Victor, placing an order for 300 copies at 33 cents an LP on October 28, 1961.

the 1961 repress cover:
https://i.imgur.com/x92oeqa.jpg

Le Sun Ra-p, celeste; Hobart Dotson-tp; Bo Bailey-tb; James Spaulding-as, fl; Marshall Allen-as, fl; John Gilmore-ts; Pat Patrick-bs, fl; Charles Davis-bs; Ronnie Boykins-b; William Cochran-d.

recorded March 6, 1959 (according to research done by the clemson guy. previously, it was thought to have been recorded in late 1958.

(this was Dotson’s last session with Sun Ra. he was apparently developing a robotripping addiction which caused problems with the non-drugtaking Ra, and after this session he hopped on a BB King tour and then moved to NYC, where he ended up recording with mingus in 1960 and 1965)

Side A:
Enlightenment (Dotson-Ra) (5:02)
Saturn (Ra) (3:37)
Velvet (Ra) (3:18)
Ancient Aeithopia (Ra) (9:04)

Side B:
Hours After (E.J. Turner) (3:41)
Horoscope (Ra) (3:43)
Images (Ra) (3:48)
Blues at Midnight (Ra) (11:56)

one more interesting tidbit about Jazz in Silhouette to help understand how Sun Ra’s music was being received (or wasn’t) during this era:

As for Jazz in Silhouette, it didn't get one single review in the jazz press. Its importance wasn't understood until it was reissued by Impulse 15 years later.

2. Sound Sun Pleasure!! (Recorded March 6,1959; Released 1970)
https://i.imgur.com/NHI63Y0.jpg

these songs, mostly standards, were recorded during the same session as Jazz in Silhouette (an insane one-day marathon that produced two full LPs!), but it wasn’t released until 1970.

same personnel as Jazz in Silhouette, above.

Side A:
'Round Midnight (Hanighen-Monk-Williams)
You Never Told Me That You Care (Hobart Dotson)
Hour of Parting (Schiffer-Spoliansky)

Side B:
Back In Your Own Backyard (Jolson-Rose-Dreyer)
Enlightenment (taken from Jazz in Silhouette) (Dotson-Ra)
I Could Have Danced All Night (Lerner-Loewe)

3. “Interstellar Low Ways” ((Recorded March 6,1959; released 1966 (or 1965) (or 1967)
“Interstellar Low Ways” was also recorded as part of that absurdly productive 3/6/1959 session, but it wasn’t released until the 1966 album Interstellar Low Ways (or 1965 or 1967 - even the Clemson guy doesn’t know). There will be more on that recording in the 1960 update.

4. “October” (Recorded 1959, Released 1968 and then reissued on Singles compilation)
this was a one-off recording session with a slightly smaller group: Sun Ra (p); Walter Strickland (tp); unidentified (tb); John Gilmore (ts); Pat Patrick (bars); Ronnie Boykins (b); poss. William Cochran (d).

5. Cry of Jazz (premiered April 3, 1959)
https://i.imgur.com/1gl3C0o.jpg

The Cry of Jazz was not a documentary about the Arkestra, though the narrator refers to the "The Sun Ra" is an innovator in jazz, and "Call for All Demons" is presented as an example of his music. Rather, the Arkestra's function is to illustrate the stylistic evolution of jazz. Members of the band are shown on screen performing a Dixieland number (title uncertain), Swing (Bland stretched a little by choosing "Urnack" as an example), bop ("Super Blonde"), a Cool number ("Who, Me?" by Paul Severson), and "The Sun Ra." A quintet is shown playing "Blues at Midnight" (as an illustration of improvising over chord changes), and Sunny appears at the piano thrashing the same passage over and over (to illustrate the lack of growth potential in jazz; the passage is exerpted from "Lela" by Eddie Higgins, from another Paul Severson album). During part of this scene the trombonist from the "Dixieland" band is also present, barely discernible in the murk. The film then shows flames about to consume slum tenements while a distorted fragment of the Dixieland music shrlls on the soundtrack. The Arkestra can be heard but not seen during another segment (playing "Demon's Lullaby”).

“The Cry of Jazz premiered on April 3, 1959. It ran for a week, two showings a night, at the Lincoln Center (700 East Oakwood Boulevard). A single private showing followed on April 28, at the Union Nations Building in New York City. Another showing took place at the Sherman Hotel during a party for the Playboy Jazz Festival in July; still another at Gerri's Palm Tavern (446 East 47th Street) on August 23.”

the cry of jazz is on youtube, as of this posting.

—

i think that’s it for 1959! everything covered in this update was on spotify, so the playlist is updated through “October”. we’ll have 1960 ready to go in a few days. there’s a one-day recording session that takes place in 1960 that is just O_O. if you have any corrections or additional material or or images or links to writing about this era or other cool things, be sure to post them below!

“Ancient Aiethopia” is my favorite on Jazz in Silhouette. it borrows the main theme and tom-heavy percussion from the song “Aiethopia” (recorded in 1958 and later released on various comps), but it goes off into lots of other wild directions over the course of 9 minutes, including a ra piano solo that takes over halfway through and dissolves into a really weird vocal chant (which involves singing/speaking through the mouthpieces of the horns, i think?). after a short drum solo, the way that the bass and piano re-enter sounds so natural and yet ahead of its time, somehow. a lot of the rest of Jazz in Silhouette plays it relatively straight, so this track always stands out for me and points toward some interesting directions i know we’ll be hearing loads more of as we proceed.

things take such an amazing leap in 1960 :)
i'll post an update later tonight (although i guess the weekends aren't a great time for this thread? i could wait til tomorrow too)

Sorry about no update. Getting ready to watch SPACE IS THE PLACE (1974) on the big screen, though :D

funnnnnnn!!
where?!

Thanks Karl and Budo for this thread. I'm catching up and have got to Jazz by Sun Ra so far. I appreciate the hard work in doing this.It certainly works for me that it's taken a breather for the moment.

hi thread!

1. thanks to KM for temporarily taking the reigns.

2. i've decided to take an indefinite leave from all internet activities besides checking my email 2x / day. if anyone would like to take it from here, please feel free. if not, perhaps we can all meet back here in a few months and start where we left off. either way is fine with me. i'm so very pleased that so many people have enjoyed the thread so far. sorry i can't stay on as leader.

peace 2 u arkestral admirers !!

Peace to you too budo x

budo jeru take as much time as you need, no worries at all. i'll get in gear and keep it going, and then hop back in whenever you're feeling better. i definitely have an idea of where you're coming from. hang in there man.

hang in there!
thread regulars may be amused to know that my music appreciation students were introduced to sun ra this week via his version of "take the A train" (we listened to several traditional versions last week)
they were perplexed, but enjoyed the costumes

apologies to everyone for not getting in gear and keeping this going. especially to budo jeru, who i explicitly promised to keep the torch burning!
i have been working nonstop on a project that has consumed pretty much all of my free time, but the deadline is tomorrow and then i'll suddenly have lots of spare time!

so i understand if you don't believe me, but i'm pumped to get this started again. my own listening sometimes outpaced this thread, but i didn't let myself get too far ahead, and i'm eager to dive back in later this week.

i trust everyone is caught up with the thread? ;)

was thinking about bumping this, hi y'all

on to 1960!!

i’m going to do 1959 today, and then 1960 sometime this week.

-― Karl Malone, Saturday, February 10, 2018 11:43 AM (two months ago)

as promised, here we are, sometime next week, somewhere between time and space!

before crossing the threshold to the 60s, i wanted to share some 50s-era images and artifacts from University of Chicago Library’s exhibit “Sounds from Tomorrow's World: Sun Ra and the Chicago Years, 1946-1961”. see the gallery for more.

https://i.imgur.com/wt2JlkS.jpg
(undated, early 1950s). sonny blount/sun ra used to hang out in washington park in the south side of chicago, writing and passing out flyers.

https://i.imgur.com/DVjiQ8d.jpg
(1956) a holiday card to promote a Saturn Records single by The Qualities)

https://i.imgur.com/WWlU7jX.jpg
(1957) the press release for Super-Sonic Jazz. i love this: “THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, BUT THE MUSIC OF THE SUN IS NEW BECAUSE SUN IS THE PACE-SETTER OF TOMORROW”

https://i.imgur.com/1dhbv95.jpg
undated

https://i.imgur.com/iDIIkGy.jpg
one of several space harps that Ra used throughout his life. featured on Angels and Demons at Play (1960).

https://i.imgur.com/uHwb5RY.jpg
an arkestra cymbal (looks like either a small ride or large crash to me)

——
i should have 1960 up later this afternoon, and as usual, i’ll update the spotify playlist as we go.

yeahhh

if you want a small taste of what a nightmare it is to try to determine any sort of chronology for this:

the date for that promotional holiday card from above could be totally wrong. the UChicago exhibit description says "this holiday card may have been printed and mailed out in conjunction with the 1956 release of Happy New Year to You! / It's Christmastime". but the clemson site says that the songs weren't recorded and released until 1960/61, while also noting that some believe the songs were recorded in 1956 but not released until 1961. so apologies for posting a 1961-related image before we get there...it was a goof

this does a nice job of setting the scene for 1960, so i'll excerpt it at length:

If we could go back and witness a concert in Chicago (the best we can do is catch a few snippets in The Cry of Jazz), we would find some parts familiar, other parts less so. The lineup then was mostly Ra compositions, plus a few standards, heavily reharmonized. No screeching or low rumbles from the saxes — they didn't acquire those techniques till after they moved to New York.

...Probably the first thing you'd notice was Sunny's lack of stage presence. The 1955 photos from the Parkway Ballroom show him in his customary position — seated in the back of the Arkestra. (On smaller stages he would sit at front left or front right.) Sunny was writing poetry and pamphlets in those days, and the Sun Ra philosophy was already well developed. John Gilmore and Marshall Allen would even hand out Sunny's newsletters on street corners, though interviews indicate that most of the Arkestra musicians were nonbelievers. But Sunny didn't sing or preach to his paying audience until 1970. In fact, he didn't say much to the audience at all. His barely audible call of Sound of Joy and a couple of very quiet tune announcements for alternate takes from the session for Jazz by Sun Ra are the only recordings of his voice on Chicago-period items intended for release.

Costumes, on the other hand, were already in evidence. In The Cry of Jazz, band members are seen wearing dark suits in some scenes and white suits in others, but the filmmakers wouldn't have wanted Dixieland and Swing numbers performed by Arkestrans in tunics and sequined headdresses. Glitzier garb soon became the norm. According to Marshall Allen, Sunny on one occasion obtained outfits that a local opera company had discarded after performing William Tell. No doubt these were the inspiration for the space-age Robin Hood uniforms the band sometimes wore in later years. Art Hoyle remembers "loud green and orange concerns" in 1956. By 1960, Arkestra members were sporting purple blazers, white gloves, and beanies with propellers on top that lit up. And they would release wind-up toy robots into the audience. There were no dancers yet, but the musicians were supposed to jump up and down on designated numbers.

Sunny had been talking about outer space for a while, but in the early days his vocal numbers were meant to be performed by the cabaret-style singers who worked Chicago nightclubs, or by doo-wop groups. The space chant, a simple ditty that could be sung by band members (and the audience, if so inclined) didn't appear till 1960. Once he started writing them they stayed in the band's repertoire for years: Interplanetary Music, We Travel the Spaceways, Rocket Number Nine Take for the Planet Venus.

https://i.imgur.com/2xfWLEU.jpg
(sun ra + arkestra, 1960)

1960 recordings

holy shit, 1960 was a GOOD year for the sun ra arkestra. june 14, 1960 looms large. during an insane one-day marathon session they recorded over THIRTY songs, which are spread out over several of the releases described below. the bulk of these recordings weren’t commercially released for several years, though, and often they were repackaged with songs from completely different eras of the band (like Angels and Demons at Play, which snaps from a mindbending 1960 exotica Side A to the frenzied bop of 1956 on side B). i’ll try to keep the focus on the 1960 recordings here:

We Travel Spaceways
mentioned upthread, We Travel Spaceways was released in 1967 but consists of music recorded in Chicago in 1959-60 (there’s also a track from 1956). there are some really, REALLY good tracks on here, but “Interplanetary Music”, the delirious opening song, stands out with its group vocals and otherworldliness.

Angels and Demons at Play
also mentioned upthread, and also released in 1967, the four songs on Side A of Angels and Demons at Play were all recorded in Chicago in 1960 (the Side B tracks were recorded in 1956). There’s definitely a tropical/exotica vibe on these songs, which include writing credits by Ronnie Boykins and Marshall Allen (bass and alto sax/flute, respectively, and both longstanding key members of the arkestra.

Interstellar Low Ways
https://i.imgur.com/beZxDVO.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/eNaRLnx.jpg
first released as Rocket Number Nine Take Off for the Planet Venus in 1966, and then reissued as Interstellar Low Ways in 1967, made up of 1960 sessions. i love the patience and quietness of the title track and “Space Loneliness” (there’s another good version of the latter on We Travel Spaceways).

Fate in a Pleasant Mood
https://i.imgur.com/Iudh1hx.jpg
most of these songs were recorded during the same epic 6/14 recording session. “Space Mates” is my favorite. it starts with an odd diversion that soon stops and reforms as a lovely flute-led (played by Marshall Allen) ballad, then a drum solo that sounds like water being poured between toms.

Holiday for Soul Dance
https://i.imgur.com/feDdRSR.jpg
a collection of standards released in 1970, but made up entirely of songs from the 6/14/60 session. these songs don’t really thrill me compared to a lot of what they were recording in 1960 (even on the same day!), but ymmv.

“Space Loneliness” b/w “State Street”
part of the a few hundred copies of this single were released on Saturn Records in 1960. reissued as part of The Singles comp in 1996.

“The Blue Set“ b/w “Big City Blues“
same deal as the single above. has sold for over $1000 on discogs, it seems. as the titles would suggest, these songs steer heavily toward the blues.

Music From Tomorrow’s World (live)
a live album recorded in Chicago 1960, released in 2002. here they are playing a Gershwin song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WhYvZi9A8E

forgot to mention - Fate in a Pleasant Mood was released in 1965. so basically, out of everything just posted, only the two singles at the bottom were actually released in 1960.

listening to "Angels And Demons At Play" on Spotify right now

yep, me too! :) i love it. the 1960 cuts (side A) are so good, it must have been amazing to be in the same room.

oh, also - spotify playlist is up-to-date through Interstellar Low Ways.

oh, also - if anyone has any other cool images or artwork (record or otherwise) of 1959-61 era they particularly like, please post it! i haven't really found much online - they weren't heavily documented during their Chicago years.

I regret selling my nice 70's Impulse reissue of Fate In A Pleasant Mood, it had new art by then though

I have this vague memory that Fate In A Pleasant Mood was unusual because it was just released under the Sun Ra name, unlike most other records from the era?

if i was a crazy millionaire guy who didn't know what to do with all his money i would go on a global quest to collect original copies of THE ENTIRE DISCOGRAPHY, and then display them in my fancy sun ra wing

xpost the cover looks like it just said "Sun Ra", but the clemson page includes this photo of what they claim to be a first pressing, and it seems to show that the arkestra was credited on the record label, at least:

https://i.imgur.com/UlH5oHo.jpg

can i just say that i really like the way that label looks blending in with the rest of the white ILX page? just saying, looks real nice

wow, so the single version of "Lights on a Satellite" on Fate in a Pleasant World (it's a bonus track) is pretty trippy. they drenched everything in tons of reverb and echo, and it comes off sounding like a more upbeat version of the Caretaker's current project.

yeah, when "secrets of the sun" comes up the whole thing's going to be an enormous pile of echo

it's too bad that the most coherent chronological discography that i've found online is locked up on pg 427 of a book (check it out!)

it's a great fucking book, though! totally recommended.

i don't know, there was an old one, i think by rlc, online that i thought was ok. "coherence" is always a difficult thing with ra.

i wish i would have read The Lives and Times of Sun Ra before! it's a real page turner. i've aways wondered about his creative process, and how they actually went about composing and performing these tunes with a continuously shifting lineup. it seems like he thrived on the unpredictability of the personnel and it became part of the process itself:

He needed a permanent body of musicians to play what he wrote, but without steady work for them it was tough. He resented his musicians playing with other bands, but there was little he could do, and he said
nothing about it to most of them. Though he wrote out each instrument's part in a hand that was so large and clear that it seemed like something out of a school exercise book, his music was too complex to sight-read, too full of unusual intervals and unexpected rhythms, so long rehearsals were necessary even in periods when they were working regularly.

With such individualized music a great deal of work was necessary to pull a piece together, especially if new players turned up at rehearsals, or if any players were missing or left the band. When one of their best drummers turned out to be unreliable, Sonny talked John Gilmore into playing drums and for years he kept a small set beside his seat in the saxophone section so that he could double on them. And since Sonny could not count on every musician being at rehearsals--or even at paying engagements-he tried to write pieces which were adaptable for any size group, from trio to twenty players, but sometimes wrote pieces to be
played only at a single rehearsal.

...Few people recall seeing Sonny composing or writing arrangements, since he worked alone, usually in the middle of the night. He wrote out parts quickly, instrument by instrument, as fast as he thought them up. It was all laid out in his head. Sometimes the musicians' parts would be two or three pages long, while Sonny's own part would be only a scrap, or something written on a matchbook. But since arrangements were corrected, embellished, and improved at rehearsals and each player was expected to make corrections in his own parts, every musician in the band was part of the composition process. Often arrangements were developed on the spot, Sonny calling out the musical line for every player so they could write them down. And while the band played the melody he would improvise a counter-melody on the piano and give that to another part of the group. This way he could arrive at a rehearsal with two or three compositions and leave with five or six.

the rest of Chapter 3 has all sorts of good stuff about that, as well as the grueling rehearsal marathons, his demand for discipline (including locking up band members in a closet for hours or making them sit up on stage but refusing to allow them to play as punishment for missing rehearsals, etc), issues with failing to pay his own musicians for their work (and writing credits, in some cases), lots of good stories from his bandmates, and a good, long discussion of ra's idea of "Space" and his general cosmology. it's really good stuff, and i wish i would have been reading it this whole time.

nice, I gotta check that one out!

Karl I swear I'm just gonna mail you a copy of the Szwed book...

no worries, i have a PDF! that's the one the excerpt above is from (Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra)

another interesting anecdote: one of the places they played a bunch in Chicago in the mid-50s was called Birdland.

So we stayed at Birdland two years. At one point there was some trouble: the Birdland in New York complained, and were going to sue. So I told the owner to change the name to Budland. He did, and we kept playing.

Budland ended up establishing a reputation as the place where the very best dancers came - "It was generally accepted that you dared not enter Budland unless you could flaunt serious dance moves". so much so, that even 15 years later, when they filmed the pilot for soul train in 1969, the dancers came from Budland:

The Soul Train pilot was shot at WCIU, and thanks to Ghent it was stocked with ringers—not the usual teenyboppers but the "baddest dancers" from Budland. When Sears exec George O'Hare saw the sample episode that he eventually was able to convince his bosses to sponsor, he was watching a group of adults re-creating the smoky, sexy atmosphere of a south-side club.

new albums on the Spotify playlist (thanks)! listening to Black Beauty now, never heard Transitions Three either.

Art Forms, of course, was heard by probably a lot of people on the Evidence 2-fer with Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy - am I correct in thinking it's the most "out" thing so far?

bump

I've been increasingly obsessed with the Chicago period and the late-70's glossy funky electronic stuff (Lanquidity, On Jupiter).

I finally started filing the LPs by recording date not release date, and by the earliest date on the record if there are multiples.

Angels And Demons, Nubians Of Plutonia, Holiday For Soul Dance, and On Jupiter have all been in heavy rotation

the Bandcamp site is so incredibly awesome, and some of the digital versions are significant upgrades or transfers, lost full stereo versions, unreleased outtakes, etc.

late 70s stuff is probably my favorite tbh, some of the aggro free-blowing dissonance of prior years gets sanded off and things get a bit more dreamy/sweeter sounding

any other recommendations besides the two I mentioned?

I also sprung for the new "Singles" 3CD, it's just amazing how much more has been discovered (in terms of previously unknown records, better sources, and session details) since that Evidence 2CD came out(checks Discogs) 23 years ago.

i was going to post here at some point saying i'm going to start again towards the end of the summer.

we're still in 1960 iirc so i'm afraid i can't help at the moment

Sleeping Beauty for sure, probably my favorite of that era.

Media Dreams and Disco 3000 are cool as well, albeit they do a bit of a different thing, what with the inclusion of the rhythm box/drum machine and a smaller combo - lots of weird synth playing, less of the swaying big band feel

xp

Strange Celestial Road also of a piece with Sleeping Beauty, "I'll Wait For You" is a definite highlight.

sweet, thanks!

been buying lots of those Scorpio LP reissues, they are super cheap and IMO sound just fine (except for The Magic City, get that on Bandcamp)

sorry for slight derails, yah let's talk about 1960, the last great Chicago year.

"Holiday For Soul Dance" is such a joy to listen to, all standards iirc and even vocals on one track

"Early Autumn" recorded at Wonder Inn, Chicago 1960.
The rest of the tracks were recorded at Elks Hall, Milwaukee June 14, 1960.

and LOL at:

Note that the personnel on the cover is known to be incorrect (dating from the mid-to-late 60s Arkestra).

also w/r/t the "Fate In A Pleasant Mood credits, I was referring to the Impulse reissue being under the "Sun Ra" name"

https://img.discogs.com/I5ZTvI1NfzmmL1PY9TMaYiUbqCA=/fit-in/560x509/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2600309-1296376853.jpeg.jpg

this totally screws up Discogs, where the same record is listed under both The Sun Ra Arkestra and Sun Ra depending on which pressing it is and what the credits said.

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-Sun-Song/release/6049178

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-And-His-Arkestra-Sun-Song/release/1109731

oops sorry for stray punctuation there

yeah, pretty much all available online discographies are a fucking mess with sun ra

PRELIMINARY BUMP

I added a 2009-released single to the beginning of the Spotify playlist, this was originally recorded "in the early 50's" and I quote the Strut Records 2016 "Singles" 3CD here:

The earliest recordings on this compilation from the pre-Arkestra era. In these poetry and sound explorations, Sun Ra sets out fundamental musical, metaphysical, and cosmological concepts that have been consistently explored through the Arkestra's work. [...] Both recitations predate Ra's "cosmo-drama" sermons, a staple part of Arkestra performances from the early 70's onwards.

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-I-Am-Strange/release/2052787

in the Strut notes, credits for "I Am An Instrument" are 'Sun Ra: recitation, space harp'. "I Am Strange" credits him with recitation and piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2JR0Jzu8Vg&feature=emb_logo

https://img.discogs.com/7xr7AexkwIrMc6ZuD3WNKUf4jYo=/fit-in/397x400/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2052787-1261272418.jpeg.jpg

if anyone has any other Chicago-era odds and ends, plz discuss! we will start the NYC era on Monday.

nice, thank you! i'm not sure how we missed that at the very beginning, especially because that pair of track leads off the Singles compilation. but glad to listen to them now! "i am strange" in particular is way out there, just amazing. the liner notes on discogs say he ran tape for the recording himself, too? diy!

OK, picking this up where we left off, welcome back.

1961 - The Futuristic Sounds Of Sun Ra

https://img.discogs.com/SE04jGMIWP3BgIAogBM7Y0oUPp0=/fit-in/600x599/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2676017-1449146371-7689.jpeg.jpg

The sleeve was designed by 'Harvey', a secretive graphic designer who made over 190 album covers for Savoy and its subsidiaries throughout the 1960s;
"Rev. Lawrence Roberts, long-time producer for Savoy Records... said that they never knew the identity of Harvey. Harvey lived in New York, and was very secretive. They would send him a title or concept and he would produce the painting. The paintings were not expensive, and they paid him in cash.”
I first encountered this record in the form of its cover-challenged reissue version “We Are In The Future”:

https://img.discogs.com/JdZn5Xl3OigUKZ9X-_dTAL233j0=/fit-in/600x591/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1222477-1514869311-2944.jpeg.jpg

This takes on a sad irony when considered along with this bit from the extensive Wikipedia history of the recordings.

Despite a heavy title and a cover painting of a conga drum swirling like a tornado through a valley of piano keys against an orange sky, the record was plagued from the start. Tom Wilson's liner notes were filled with inaccuracies: Distribution was almost as poor as it was with the Saturn records, and there was no reviews for twenty-three years, when it was reissued in 1984 as We Are In The Future.'

It’s worth noting that although numerous albums were recorded in the next two years, nothing was actually released until late 1963, and then it was on Saturn, not someone else’s label - that wouldn’t happen again until 1965, with ESP.

I’d also like to take a moment to focus on producer Tom Wilson, who hasn’t been mentioned so far but plays a key role, being the first person to record Sun Ra (as well as Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane, according to Szwed). Wilson, of course, went on to record Sun Ra throughout the 50’s and later produce The Velvet Underground and The Mothers Of Invention in the 60’s. This was recorded at Medallion Studios in Newark NJ on Oct. 10th 1961. The Arkestra wouldn’t work with Wilson again until 1965.

I’ll be honest and note upfront that I don’t particularly click with (at least some examples of) the open-air big room sound of the NYC Choreographer’s Workshop recordings that follow this album (we’ll get there next). I largely prefer the closer-mic’d (? I think) “professional” studio sounds of the Chicago RCA Studio era, and this record catches the Arkestra right in that moment of transition. I’m also less of a “free” fan than I am a modal/spiritual hat, bop/post-bop & older styles jazz fan.

The music itself, true to the title, jumps off from the 50’s post-bop into the future with increasing atonality creeping into the fringes, fun stuff. “China Gates” is my jam, I always love the songs with vocalists from this era. “Tapestry From An Asteroid” is as sweet of a ballad as you could want, perfection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAD-y6KFAU

BONUS LISTENING:

I moved the “Transitions 3” tracks to the spot right after this album in the Spotify playlist, the titles are all contemporary with this LP or earlier, think of it as a bonus disc. That way we start with the Choreographer’s Workshop albums proper. Maybe a day or two to listen/comment, and then on to the next one?