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

in other words, i'm agreeing with szwed that this period of sun ra's work definitely transcends the exotica which was its sometimes-inspiration

yeah, its a springboard. it's interesting that it was a very different springboard from what most post-bop jazz guys were working from. Yusef Lateef maybe being the other big exception.

I have nothing to base this on but my assumption would be most of the cutting edge jazz guys of the time looked askance at exotica as silly and corny

i definitely think the intersection between exotica kitsch and serious jazz is a complicated one... sonny did a fair amount of mambo work, for instance, which was kitsch music but kitsch music that sprung from the afro-cuban work of people like machito, who _was_ very much taken seriously. it's that fringe, the Old, Weird Exotica... if you listen to early Ferrante and Teicher, "Soundproof" specifically, and listen to the massive amounts of prepared piano they're doing - put the opening of "mississippi boogie" vs. "winnsboro cotton mill blues" - "novelty" and "avant-garde" are both interested in doing new things and, particularly early on, trying to differentiate the two is often a false dichotomy. the interesting thing about people like duke and sonny is that even when "exotica" had coalesced into a series of tired tropes their use of that music remained fresh (listen, for instance, to the vocal version of "Afrique" from 1970's Conny Plank session). sonny of course identified more with fletch than with duke but he could still kill it on "sophisticated lady"...

moving on!

1961 - Bad And Beautiful

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The first recording from their new NYC rehearsal & recording space. Quoting Szwed:

(Tommy) Hunter got a job at the Choreographers’ Workshop, a dancer’s rehearsal space at 414 West 54th Street. For the next three years this was to be the band’s studio for rehearsal and recording at nights and on weekends. when it was available they used the basement because it had a good piano and better acoustics, but they took what they could get. Hunter was now the second drummer with the band, but he also began to record all of their rehearsals with an Ampex 601 tape recorder he had bought for $800 at a pawnshop, and then to edit them with Sun Ra.

The definitive version of these recordings, like so many others, is on Bandcamp, where Irwin Chusid and Michael D. Anderson have been systematically remastering from the original tapes. Man, what Impulse did on the original release (see below) is practically criminal (granted, they had an uphill battle to start with). I’m going to quote the liner notes in full, they also show just how cleaned up and definitive the Bandcamp editions are compared to even the Evidence CDs of the 90’s.

The Bad and Beautiful was the first album recorded in New York by Sun Ra after he arrived from Chicago with a small contingent of the Arkestra in 1961. Its release was delayed for 11 years, finally appearing on Sunny's Saturn label in 1972. The album consists of four Sun Ra originals and three standards recorded by a sextet consisting of the leader on piano, accompanied by mainstays John Gilmore, Pat Patrick, Marshall Allen, Ronnie Boykins, and Tommy Hunter.

The album finds the band at a transitional stage between the "hard space bop" of their Chicago days and the avant-garde direction Sunny's music would take in the 1960s. A superficial listen would seem to indicate the repertoire and style were retrospective, yet it's evident from countless flourishes in the arranging and performing that a group of brash newcomers had arrived on the Gotham scene. Despite a string of late 1960s Saturn LP pressings of recordings made in Chicago from 1956 to 1961, upon their arrival on the east coast Sunny and his ensemble began progressing beyond what passed for "polite" jazz. New York changed Sunny irrevocably by inspiring and challenging him. He didn't just find himself in a new city; he began exploring the deeper cosmos.

In many ways, Bad and Beautiful is a resume. It lays out what Sunny had learned as a pianist, composer, bandleader, and arranger during his Chicago years (and earlier growing up in Birmingham). It also presents the Arkestra as a tight-knit, yet relaxed ensemble, a team of professionals who play to each others' strengths with mutual respect. The album seems to say: This is who we are, this is what we did, we hope you like it, but don't expect us to continue in this fashion.

Then there's the issue of sonic quality. Bad and Beautiful sounds like it was recorded in a basement. In fact, it was: at the Choreographer's Workshop, 414 West 51st Street, which was the Arkestra's rehearsal space for several years after they arrived in NYC. The album's title thus acquires secondary implications: under bad conditions, beautiful music can be made. There's a genre called "garage rock." This is "garage jazz."

Two years after its delayed 1972 release, Bad and Beautiful was reissued with a lavish gatefold cover as part of a planned series of Saturn reissues and new recordings Sun Ra would make for the prestigious Impulse! jazz label. (That deal fell apart in two years, and a number of scheduled reissues and new projects were abandoned.) The Impulse! LP included the following technical note: "Many of the early Saturn recordings were recorded under less than optimum circumstances, and listeners are advised that certain portions of this album do not reach the standards of state-of-the-art recordings of the mid-1970s." That said, Impulse! proceeded to "fix" this admittedly "less than optimum" recording by mixing the monophonic tapes into fake "stereo" (attempting to replicate what had been lamentably done on the Saturn LP). Highs were boosted on one channel, lows on the other, producing a disorienting balance in which the left channel was noticeably inferior to the right. In addition, the tape was marred by sporadic flutter and dropouts, the tape speed ran slow, and the prevailing analog format made it difficult to remove transient noise while retaining the glorious lo-fi racket captured at the Choreographer's Workshop in 1961.

On this digital reissue we have retained the monophonic format. Working from the original tapes, we repaired a number of audio flaws and removed a scintilla of tape hiss, while retaining the raw energy captured by a historic band making great music in a less-than-ideal environment. These recordings aren't perfect. They will never be perfect. Trying to perfect them might inadvertently remove a layer of soul.

This remastered edition includes a previously unreleased session track, "Street of Dreams," featuring Pat Patrick showcased on baritone sax in a quartet setting. It appears here as track four, as found in sequence on the tape.

I believe this archival photo is from the Workshop:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8tRUd669B4I/Sca2lQrcYaI/AAAAAAAAAq8/ld44A2PvLyw/s1600/Ra+-+Choreographers+Workshop.jpg

Allmusic review:

Bad and Beautiful is probably the first recording made after the Arkestra settled in New York in 1961. Not everyone in the Chicago band wanted to make the move, and since they hadn't been in New York long enough to recruit new musicians, Bad and Beautiful features an Arkestra that's been stripped down to a sextet of Ra, Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, Pat Patrick (who had already moved to NY), Ronnie Boykins, and Tommy "Bugs" Hunter. Aside from "Exotic Two," the tunes are split between standards (apparently the last ones the group would record until the '70s) and blues originals, but there are indications of the direction the Arkestra would take throughout the '60s. "Search Light Blues" has some interesting percussion accents finding their way into the arrangement, and "Exotic Two" alludes more clearly to the percussion-heavy sound that dominated many of the '60s recordings. Sun Ra plays piano exclusively on this recording, and Gilmore gets lots of room to shine. A significant transitional LP, this is probably the last "inside" record the Arkestra would record as they forged new sonic paths into the mid-'60s

So yeah, this one still has its feet partly in the past, as noted. It’s the last one I fully click with for quite some time, and I think of it as a Chicago-era album in spirit. I’m gonna try to give the next 10-15 years a(nother) fair shot, I promise.

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/bad-and-beautiful

Youtube playlist

unfamiliar with this one

it's good! it's got the "big room" reverb sound of the CW era, but still pretty tight and dialed in

I was tempted to buy one of those cheap Scorpio reissue LPs of this - until I read the remaster notes...

i must have low standards for audio fidelity, because it sounds ok to me! i definitely get the vibe that it's recorded by one of the band members in a basement, but i can clearly hear what everyone is playing, and none of the instruments dominate the others. (maybe it helps that some of the first music i got into was really lo-fi (early Microphones)).

gilmore's sax solo sounds really good on Street of Dreams. it's amazing how restrained the band's playing is on the standards, knowing how far out they were about to go. i think that often with avant artists, musical or otherwise, there's a tendency to think that they went way "out" because they didn't bother mastering the basics. (not that **I** would think that way, hmph hmph). but clearly ra and his group had absolutely mastered the form, even by the late 50s. i love their spin on the standards.

oh yes, we will get to the "free" controversy tomorrow! I totally agree with you of course.

note: I believe both the Spotify files and the Youtube link are the newer, remasters Bandcamp version

this is nice, pretty laid back! Ra could be so confrontational and atonal I think sometimes it gets overlooked how pretty and gentle his arrangements could be.

1961/62 - Art Forms Of Dimensions Tomorrow

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Here we go into the wild and wonderful world of the Saturn 60’s. This record was recorded in two different sessions - album closers ”Lights on a Satellite" and "Kosmos in Blue" were recorded at the same time as yesterday’s Bad And Beautiful, the rest in early 1962. There’s a world of difference between the sessions - the album opener “Cluster Of Galaxies” is as out-there as any German obscurity from a decade later. The record itself was not released until 1965, continuing a long and maddening discographical puzzle. It’s one of the earlier ones that I got into, I used to have the Evidence twofer CD with Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy as well. I really dig these early experiments, they are pleasingly sparse and inventive (to my ears) for the most part. But all of these ’62 tracks except “Ankh #1” aren’t in the same universe as the Chicago sound. The train has left the station (also, they could now record on as many tapes as they could afford).

It’s unclear on how much the move to NYC affected the sound vs. how much was already there and latent, Szwed certainly seems to think the move made a difference. “Free” jazz had already gotten established there, not without controversy of course. In the course of doing research for this I found the famous story of Max Roach following Ornette Coleman off the stage after a Five Spot set and punching him in the jaw cuz the music pissed him off so much. With me, the louder it gets the less I generally like it, which is why I guess I gravitate towards stuff like free improv (Incus-style or later AMM) as opposed to the dense roar of something like Coltrane’s Ascension.

Worth noting that at this point the Arkestra had received their first national notice (in Downbeat), from a Cafe Bizarre gig on Feb. 18th. The ball was rolling, although they were still living in communal poverty - they had regular gigs at Cafe Bizarre, and they were doing side work as well.

More details at the Bandcamp link (and an extra track at the end, recorded at the earlier 1961 session like the two before it in the track order):

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/art-forms-of-dimensions-tomorrow

Youtube playlist

actually I'm gonna quote the Bandcamp writeup here:

"Cluster of Galaxies" and "Solar Drums" are modernistic percussion soundscapes, bracketing "Ankh #1," a swaggering R&B rework of a late '50s tune from the artist's Chicago years. "The Outer Heavens," sans rhythm section, echoes Third Stream chamber jazz, while "Infinity of the Universe" offsets a percussion battalion with thunderous low-register piano. "Lights on a Satellite" and "Kosmos in Blue," both recorded at an earlier Choreographer's session, ground the set on terra firma with some stylish hard bop. "Lights" remained a staple in Sunny's concert repertoire for the rest of his life.

another one I'd never previously got around to

But all of these ’62 tracks except “Ankh #1” aren’t in the same universe as the Chicago sound. The train has left the station (also, they could now record on as many tapes as they could afford).

it seems like the pawn-shop procured ampex recorder really is key, an impetus for creativity and experimentation.

do we have an idea of what their live sets of the time (early 60s NYC) were like? are there set lists?

this is one of those albums that's such a mishmash of composed and improvised pieces that it all blurs together. That's not a criticism, I'd just be hard-pressed to say where one song stops and another starts without looking at the tracklisting.

funny you should mention that - from the Wikipedia entry for Sun Ra:

After the move to New York, Sun Ra and company plunged headlong into the experimentalism that they had only hinted at in Chicago. The music was often extremely loud and the Arkestra grew to include multiple drummers and percussionists. In recordings of this era, Ra began to use new technologies—such as extensive use of tape delay—to assemble spatial sound pieces that were far removed from earlier compositions such as Saturn. Recordings and live performances often featured passages for unusual instrumental combinations, and passages of collective playing that incorporated free improvisation. It is often difficult to tell where compositions end and improvisations begin.

I don't think there are any early setlist examples (i.e. before 1968 or so), but I will dig around a bit and see what I can find.

has anyone read this? it looks like a good companion to the Szwed book:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29639441-a-pure-solar-world

cheers for the heads up sleeve. i only own 5 or 6 of his albums so need help to decide where to go next

welcome!

thought this was a fine set, if not very remarkable or distinctive.

what tape delay unit(s) did Ra have at this point?

it's something on the Ampex itself that Tommy Hunter discovered by accident messing with input & outputs, I can post the relevant Szwed quote later this evening if someone else doesn't find it

(that heavy reverb that you hear on the first track)

ah yeah in-built reverb units were definitely widely available and a feature on lots of equipment in the early 60s. Tape delay units though (I think?) are another story.

1962 - Secrets Of The Sun

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First, a word about the reverb discussed yesterday, cf. Szwed: “While testing the tape recorder when the musicians were tuning up one day, Hunter discovered that if he recorded with the earphones on, he could run a cable from the output jack back into the input on the recorder and produce massive reverberation:

”I wasn’t sure what Sun Ra would think of it… I though the might be mad - but he loved it. It blew his mind! By working the volume of the output on the playback I could control the effect, make it fast or slow, drop it out, or whatever.”

After a fairly straight opening track, we are confronted with one of Ra’s many “what the hell is THIS?” moments with new “space vocalist” Art Jenkins, singing through a ram’s horn to produce a natural wah-wah effect. The track dissolves into a reverbed-out percussion jam partyway through, then goes back to the whacked out space vocals and atonal meanderings. Getting pretty weird, this is an unusual one, but most of the album is more recognizably “jazz” although pretty free for the time. Again, the Bandcamp remaster is definitive, with improved sound and three unreleased tracks from the same session.

Per Bandcamp: “The album features an arsenal of percussion, often in the hands of Arkestra horn players, reinforced by the thumping bass of Ronnie Boykins. Sun Ra's developing Afrocentric consciousness inspired many of these relentlessly thunderous grooves. Despite the sustained pounding, there is a sparseness to most arrangements, fewer instruments in the mix, with piano often serving as counterpoint to the rhythmic clatter. It's less an orchestra than an expanded combo. There are few "genre" works on Secrets, and much less of what was conventionally considered "jazz" during Sunny's Chicago roost. New York, the artist's recently adopted hometown, was serving to liberate the composer's imagination. […] Several of these tracks — "Friendly Galaxy" and "Love in Outer Space" — became concert staples in years ahead.”

This record, although seemingly recorded at the same session or at least general timeframe in 1962, was not released until 1965, and then as a self-released Saturn LP. I’ve added it to the Spotify playlist.

Youtube playlist

Frustratingly, the next three songs recorded by the Arkestra in 1962 are not on Spotify or Bandcamp, but they can be heard as tracks 2, 3, and 9 of this Youtube playlist for the out-of-print Out There A Minute CD compilation, released in the late 80’s by Blast First (a collection of otherwise-unreleased 60’s tracks).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njrJ5Th0V4E

Tomorrow we’ll catch up on some particularly rare odds & ends and move into early 1963 (maybe, exact recording dates for a lot of this stuff are unclear, and there is disagreement about some of the tracks coming up).

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/secrets-of-the-sun

sleeeeeeeeeeeeeve!

thanks so much for reviving and doing all of this. :)

we're getting into unexplored territory for me

Again, the Bandcamp remaster is definitive, with improved sound and three unreleased tracks from the same session.

i think you referenced this upthread, but do you happen to know if the versions that are on spotify are the remasters, or the old ones? i'm happy to navigate over to the bandcamp page for listening, but i thought i'd check just in case.

they are the new remasters! you can see the unreleased tracks in the playlist.

this one I know. The most distinctive thing that leaps out about it to me is honestly Calvin Newborn's guitar playing. I'm not sure what confluence of events led such an R&B/blues-steeped player to Sun Ra, but he does some great relatively straight-ahead jazz guitar work here.

also one of a long line of Ra records that just feature downright odd mixing decisions. It's not that stuff is recorded badly per se, but so often things are foregrounded or obscured in unpredictable ways. You end up with these mixes, like on Friendly Galaxy, where the rhythm section and piano sound like they're in another room, muffled and muted, while the flutes are out front, clear as day. Tends to emphasize the otherworldly quality of the compositions as well, because it doesn't sound quite like a "live" recording nor does it sound like a carefully engineered studio session, it's some sort of strange mixture.

yes there's a specific Szwed quote about that that I considered typing in, I'll dig that up for tomorrow. "calling attention to the recording process"

huh listening more closely I realize that Newborn's p much only audible on that one track Flight to Mars...? which wasn't even on the original album

1962-63 - What’s New/The Invisible Shield

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The tracks from this era make up parts of the ultra-rare Saturn label releases covered here, two LPs not released until 1974-75 and then in a bewildering hodgepodge of different pressings, swapping out material between them (to make it even more confusing, there are also “hybrid” LP mixups with sides from Invisible Shield and Space Probe out there):

https://www.discogs.com/The-Sun-Ra-Arkestra-Whats-New-Sub-Undergound-Series/release/2903543

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-And-His-Intergalactic-Research-Arkestra-The-Invisible-Shield/release/8014095

https://www.discogs.com/The-Sun-Ra-Arkestra-Whats-New-Sub-Undergound-Series-The-Invisible-Shield/release/7380383

The Invisible Shield is on Bandcamp with extensive notes (again with goodies - an extended version, three stereo mixes replacing previous mono, and one unreleased track), but I wish they had talked more about the discrepancy between their edition and the Szwed book, which credits the original LP B-side (tracks 7-9) as being from 1970. Apparently now the date has been revised to the 1961-1963 range (based on things like identifying the instruments and playing style, then cross-referencing with Arkestra membership or session dates). So I’m including them here… but the title track is gonna come later, they now say “recording location and date unknown, ca. 1966–68, possibly live concert excerpt.” A fitting mystery.

The record itself is another lovely romp, again cf. Bandcamp:

The Invisible Shield is an extremely rare LP. It was never officially released on El Saturn (tho it did have a catalog number—529), and just a few hundred LPs were pressed around 1974 and sold at concerts. It never even had a standardized, printed cover—each copy was hand-designed. Several tracks appeared on such other releases as Janus, What's New, Satellites Are Outerspace, and A Tonal View of the Times.

The A and B sides of the LP traced a mind-scrambling excursion from Earth to Elsewhere. The first side offered rowdy, early 1960s post-bop renditions of Tin Pan Alley favorites arranged for quartet (2) and quintet (3, 4, 5, 6), along with a well-crafted original, "State Street," for full band—a fairly mainstream outing by Arkestra standards. Side B opened with a locked-in Latin groove ("Island in the Sun"), before segueing into two jarring and uncompromising electro-acoustic soundscapes, probably recorded five years apart.

There's no stylistic bridge between the material. Sun Ra fans of the period were accustomed to new albums which were in fact compilations of older, previously unreleased material, often from different, unrelated sessions. The common denominator was the bandleader, who saw no need to stylistically unify the product. These albums were like samplers: Try this (hard bop), and if you like it, you might also like this (lunar beeps) by the same artist.

Sooooo… I don’t know what’s up with the digital rights to the Art Yard label, but the four tracks that were “originally” on the A-side of What’s New (rec. 1962-63, rel. 1975) are only available on a physical CD released in the UK by Art Yard, and not on digital media that I could find.

I managed to find three of the four tracks on Youtube - all but “Jukin’”

What’s New

Wanderlust

Autumn In New York

These are lovely, fairly straight readings of classic small-unit jazz, sweet and sentimental. I wish they were more widely available!

I’ve added the Invisible Shield tracks to the Spotify playlist, but I really recommend checking out the What’s New tracks linked above.

Regarding the weird mixing decisions discussed yesterday, here’s that Szwed quote:

“…Sun Ra began to regularly violate [recordings conventions] on the Saturn releases by recording live at strange sites, by using feedback, distortion, high delay or reverb, unusual microphone placement, abrupt fades or edits, and any number of other effects or noises which called attention to the recording process. On some recordings you could hear a phone ringing, or someone walking near the microphone. It was a rough style of production, an antistyle, a self-reflexive approach which anticipated both free jazz recording conventions and punk production to come.”

On these tracks, that’s only really evident on the outer-limits echofest of “Janus”, but there will be a lot more to come!

Gonna take a break until Monday and then fully move into 1963 (by our best guess, anyway) with one of my favorites.

huh yeah my ID tags on these tracks have them from 1974, but they do definitely sound like they're from an earlier era. I hadn't really bothered to dig into the details prior to this thread.

man the title track is definitely from later, there were no synths like that in the early 60s

totally, wild shit there but absolutely not from the 1963 era.

secrets of the sun is one of my favorite ra LPs, i just love the crazy reverbed-out psychedelic ambience, such great tunes too, friendly galaxy, space aura, love in outer space, all total standards... is this the first "love in outer space"?

I believe so, yes

1962 (addendum)

Weekend bump: I added some tracks from the Singles compilation that were also recorded in 1962, to wrap that year up. The first one ("Blue One/Orbitration In Blue") is a single that wasn't even discovered until 1997. Then there's a track from the aforementioned Out There A Minute compilation and a single they did backing up R'n'B singer Little Mack Gordon.

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Although not much is for sure with any of these release dates, the next record was at least partly recorded in 1963.

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1962 - When Sun Comes Out

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I was wrong, I think we’re still in 1962 :) The first of the NYC Choreographer’s Workshop (CW henceforth) recordings to be released in more or less a contemporary timeframe, this was recorded in either April or November 1962 (newer sources differ, but Szwed says ’63!! who the fuck knows.) and released as an LP on Saturn later in 1963.

Szwed on that year:

Off and on for the next year the Arkestra found work at pianist Gene Herris’s Playhouse, a MacDougal Street coffeehouse where they often played to an empty room. It was there that Sonny first met Farrell “Little Rock” Sanders, who sometimes was working as a waiter.[…] Sun Ra gave him a place to stay, bought him a new pair of green pants with yellow stripes (which Sanders hated but had to have), encouraged him to use the name “Pharoah,” and gradually worked him into the band. [not until 1964 though] […]The title song [“When Sun Comes Out”] introduced a second alto saxophonist into the band, Danny Davis, a seventeen-year-old from downtown […] saxophone duels would become a nightly showpiece for the Arkestra […] Sun Ra pushed the idea further, having the players mime the battles physically, jumping at each other or rolling on the floor.

As per Bandcamp, again the definitive issue in terms of sonics:

When Sun Comes Out is percussion-centric, and not just as backdrops—on many tracks whatever's being hit with a stick (or palms) is on top of the mix. Sun Ra's piano, some brass, and a quartet of saxophones compete for airspace with an arsenal of drums, congas and bongos, bells and cowbells, shakers and gongs (a good deal of it handled by the reed section). In fact, the mix often defies professional engineering standards, as musical hardware that usually provides the foundation occasionally dominates the lead instruments.

The horns are more aggressive than in the Chicago years, Sunny experiments with atonality on the keyboard, and on many tracks he dispenses with conventional structure. The Arkestra here includes four saxophonists (John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, Pat Patrick, and newcomer Danny Davis, then just 17), who take liberties to extend the instrument's vocabulary, their solos often independent of the rhythm bed. Sun Ra was traversing the universe, and there's a lot of space out there. On this album the explosive drummer Clifford Jarvis makes his recording debut with the Arkestra, a relationship that would extend on and off for a decade and a half. There's also a fun ensemble vocal—identified as having been performed by "Arkestra Unit"—on a remake of "We Travel the Spaceways."

This remastered edition includes a number of sonic treats:

• The complete version of the opening track "Circe" (featuring wordless vocals by Theda Barbara); the Saturn release omitted most of the introductory gong sequence (by Tommy Hunter).

• The LP's side two tracks (here 6 – 9) in stereo from the master tape. All known pressings of the LP were in mono.

• The previously unreleased part two of the percussive composition "The Nile," featuring a haunting flute solo by Marshall Allen.

• The complete "Dimensions in Time," recorded at the Choreographer's Workshop around this time but released only in an abridged version (and titled "Primitive") on the mid-1970s hybrid release Space Probe.

So yeah, parts of this (tracks 6 & 7 especially) are serious skronkfests, but they are held together by new drummer Clifford Jarvis and his urgent, nimble pulse running through it all.

I love the way this records sounds, the semi-ritualistic percussive aspect to it, the opening vocals (presaging June Tyson’s involvement), the overall vibe. Definitely in my top 5 NYC 60’s recordings of his. I was previously unfamiliar with it until I started diving back into Sun Ra as a result of this thread, now over two years old. And don’t miss the rest of the session, which wasn’t released until much later as shown below.

The last track (“Primitive”) is from this era but wasn’t released until much later as part of the Space Probe LP, along with “The Conversation Of J.P.” included here in an abridged version (from the Exotica set) as the digital rights are with Art Yard and the full length 13-minute version is CD-only. The Art Yard CD version has a few additional tracks from these sessions. I love these two “outtakes”, percussion jams with 1 or 2 instruments over the top, mesmerizing.

Here’s the Youtube playlist for those CD-only tracks including the full-length “Conversation”

this was the earliest Ra record I got on vinyl and it definitely feels like the *beginning* of an era

1963 - When Angels Speak Of Love

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One of the rarest Saturn releases (estimated 150 copies pressed), I thought now would be a good time for this Szwed excerpt:

”Early in the 1960s Sun Ra was in Audiosonic, an independent recording studio in the Brill Building near Times Square, when he ran into one of their engineers, Fred Vargas. Vargas was a Costa Rican who had worked his way up from the garment district to a job in the REL labs with General Edwin Howard Armstrong, the inventor of FM radio, and then on to becoming a recording engineer. Shortly after, Audiosonic was turned into Variety Recording Studio on 225 West 46th Street when it was bought out by Vargas and Warren Smith, an English teacher in Connecticut. Vargas and Smith were intrigued by Sun Ra’s music, and they began to record his small groups […] They extended him long-term credit, living with occasional bounced checks, and helped him cut costs (Sonny often saved fifty dollars by sticking his own blank labels on the records, keeping his cost for a 12-inch LP to 99 cents). Vargas and Smith allowed Sonny to press as few as 100 copies of a record at a time, when most recording companies had a minimum of 500. By handprinting the covers they could avoid printing costs altogether […] For the next thirty years (emphasis mine) Vargas recorded much of Sonny’s music, editing the tapes with him, mastering them, and helping him get his records pressed. He introduced Sonny to people on show business, like Gershon Kingsley […] who later helped Sonny program his first Moog.”

Can we get a hand for Fred Vargas, everyone?

This explains a lot about the territory we’re getting into, where some small-press vinyl editions were not rediscovered until years or decades later, and even then sometimes the recordings themselves predate the time of original release. We’ll get further into that later on in 1964, at the end of the CW era, when we discuss the loose ends.

Bandcamp intro:

When Angels Speak of Love, released in 1966 on Sun Ra's Saturn label, is a rarity, there having been limited pressings (150 copies, by one estimate), which were sold thru the mail and at concerts and club dates. The tracks were taped in New York during two 1963 sessions at the Choreographer's Workshop, a rehearsal space/recording den with warehouse acoustics. Ra spent countless hours at the CW from 1961 to 1964 sharpening the Arkestra during exhaustive musical huddles. John Corbett calls this "one of the most continuous, best-documented periods of Ra's work"; much tape from these seminal sessions has survived and been issued on LP, CD and digitally.

This release wasn’t reissued until last year!! I hadn’t listened until now, as I’m writing this up. It’s way more enjoyable and inventive than I was expecting. I though it was gonna be totally out there like we’re gonna get in the near future, but the real excursions are mostly saved for the epic B-side track. The first track in particular grabbed me, again a very sparse and arresting vibe like the beginning of yesterday’s When Sun Comes Out.

The Bandcamp edition has some newly-discovered stereo versions and a Sun-ra-created stereo edit of the 18-minute “Next Stop Mars.”

AMG review as per Bandcamp:

William Ruhlmann at AllMusic observed, "Sun Ra's music is often described as being so far outside the jazz mainstream as to be less a challenge to it than a largely irrelevant curiosity. But When Angels Speak of Love is very much within then-current trends in jazz as performed by such innovators as John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. Walter Miller's trumpet on 'The Idea of It All,' for example, indicates he'd been listening to Miles Davis, even as John Gilmore's squealing tenor suggests Coltrane; and, on 'Ecstasy of Being,' what John Corbett calls Danny Davis' 'excruciated alto' suggests Coleman. Ra himself plays busy, seemingly formless passages that are reminiscent of Cecil Taylor. This is a Sun Ra album that is more conventionally unconventional than most, with tracks you could program next to those of his 1960s contemporaries and have them fit right in."

cf. Szwed: “The record jacket carried a poem by Sun Ra […]”

WHEN ANGELS SPEAK

When Angels speak
They speak of cosmic waves of sound
Wavelength infinity
Always touching planets
In opposition outward bound

When Angels speak
They speak on wavelength infinity
Beam cosmos
Synchronizing the rays of darkness
Into visible being
Blackout!
Dark Living Myth-world of being

a lot of "when angels speak of love" was on the blast first "out there a minute" comp, though, right?

no, just the title track and the 12-minute stereo version of "Next Stop Mars" as far as I can see.

Szwed lists the unreleased tracks from that comp in his discography, but I did not actually realize it had previously-released tunes on it!

this is the kind of thing I was expecting to not be available tbh. I have Out There a Minute but am otherwise unfamiliar with these tracks.

1963 - Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy

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Fairly well-known, recorded in late 1963 but not released on Saturn until 1967. Repressed several times in the 60s and again in 1973. Later it was part of the Evidence twofer reissue series of the early 90’s, which is where I first heard it (paired with Art Forms Of Dimensions Tomorrow). This one gets out there, but still stays fairly sparse and restrained for totally free music - Szwed refers to “the chamberlike quality.” The second half was recorded live at 10 in the morning at the Tip Top Club in Brooklyn, where Sun Ra could use their Hammond B-3. cf. Szwed “The acoustics are ad hoc, and on "Adventure Equation" the club's phone can be heard ringing during two passages.”

from the Bandcamp version writeup:

“Arkestra saxophonists John Gilmore and Marshall Allen are present, but playing bass clarinet and oboe respectively, while sax is covered by Pat Patrick and brash newcomer Danny Davis. Sunny plays Clavioline and percussion (as do others), but no piano. The Arkestra rarely plays in ensemble mode, but instead alternately deploys in smaller configurations, almost chamber-style.

Tracks are remastered, but no other extra goodies to speak of this time around. For some reason the Bandcamp version does tack on a bonus track recorded a year later, we’ll get to that at the proper time. On to 1964!