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

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!

amazing posts, sleeve, thank you.

had this one for ages - the juxtaposition of sparse instrumentation that sounds at once both composed and improvised was not what I expected from "free jazz" when I first heard this record. It's creaky and shambolic and full of space and silences but it also sounds very intimate.

1962-1964 - Choreographer’s Workshop loose ends (excerpts from The Solar Myth Approach)

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-solar-myth-approach-vol-1

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-solar-myth-approach-vol-2

These reissues (originally issued as a double LP set) actually came out LAST WEEK, since I started this thread back up, as a definitive new remaster on Bandcamp. I’m going to forego c&p-ing the whole insane BYG/Charly/lack-of-documentation-or-provenance story (which you should all read), and give excerpts below.

BYG/Actual were ill-fated, it seems _ I didn’t know any of this previously:

Since the demise of BYG, the Solar-Myth Approach albums have been reissued without legitimacy in a series of ever worsening-quality packages in various formats. The Charly reissues were inferior to the BYG originals (and displayed different cover art), and a dreadful off-pitch, out-of phase 2-CD bootleg appeared on the Fuel label in 2001.

On a qualitative level, this 2020 Cosmic Myth remastering from best-available sources (tapes and discs) constitutes an upgrade.

With regard to today’s listening, four of the tracks from the double LP set are (by best guess) from this era. Essentially, most people used to think these tracks were contemporary to the 1969-70 era, but current research and deep listening has led people-who-should-know to draw new conclusions, dating four of the tracks on these two 1971 LPs to the CW years, 1962-64. Specifically:

Michael D. Anderson of the Sun Ra Music Archive believes (and we concur) that "They'll Come Back" (from Vol. 1) and "Ancient Ethiopia" (from Vol. 2) were recorded either in Chicago, or at the Choreographer's Workshop in the first years after Ra settled in New York. Compared to everything else on the Solar-Myth Approach, the tight arrangements of "They'll Come Back" and "Ancient Ethiopia" are outliers. They do not sound like anything Sun Ra produced in the late 1960s—but they do sound comparable to his arrangements from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Reconsidering "They'll Come Back" in 2019, Campbell remarked, "I’d say Choreographers Workshop 1963–1965." […]Anderson also believes that "Realm of Lightning" (Vol. 1) and "The Utter Nots" (Vol. 2) originated at Choreographer's, in 1962 and 1964 respectively.

So, like the Out There A Minute release, the Solar Myth albums are grab bags of tapes, best illustrated by this excerpt from the Bandcamp writeup:

In a 2019 conversation, Ra historian/authority John Corbett explained that when Sun Ra and the Arkestra toured in the late 1960s and '70s, the bandleader often lugged along a cumbersome tape deck and a suitcase of open-reel tapes, which he would review during leisure time on the road. These tapes were a smorgasbord of styles, sessions, and band configurations from random periods in Ra's recorded history. According to Corbett, in several highly likely instances during overseas tours, Ra needed funds for return airfare or travel expenses, and would sell such tapes (or copies thereof) to European labels—a quick hand-off deal. Tape documentation could be scarce-to-non-existent, which would prompt labels to guess dates, titles, and personnel, or rely on skimpy (or fabricated) info provided by Ra. It's highly possible that BYG acquired the Solar-Myth tapes in this fashion.

This also accounts for the era-jumbled messiness of e.g. the Pictures Of Infinity LP on Black Lion, among others. I’ll try to slot the various tracks from these into the playlist where I can, given the sources available for dating them.

I’ve added the four tracks discussed above to the Spotify playlist. We’ll keep going into 1964 tomorrow, with the major work of the year.

the BYG/Actuel editions of vol 1 and 2 were some of the first vinyl Ra albums I was able to get (after Heliocentric Worlds, which always seemed to be in print) so they shaped my earliest impressions of Ra's ouevre. Had no idea any of these tracks dated from the early 60s though!

love the celeste (?) intro/interludes on "They'll Come Back". just an instrument I always love to hear.

1964 - Other Planes Of There

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In Szwed’s book it refers to the original cover being the pink/blue color scheme above, but none of the early Discogs listings show that. What the hell, I like to imagine this was how it was first issued.

Recorded in early 1964 at the CW, released as an LP on Saturn in 1966. Only repressed once, that same year, and then out of print until the 1992 Evidence CD.

I got this a few years back when I went on an LP buying spree triggered by those newer cheap (bootleg?) Scorpio reissue pressings (they are $12 each new at my local store), but I think I played it once to rip it and then filed it, feeling unimpressed. On probably my second listen, it’s hard for me to see it as anything other than “The Magic City: Take One” as it follows the same format of a side-long 1st track and then a few (mostly long) tracks on the B-side. The 22-minute title track seems kinda unfocused to me, like a collection of solos strung together. Then a long mostly percussive improv, and a small-unit track called “Sketch” that’s really close to the earlier post-bop sounds. There’s a brief respite from the free swirl with the seasick quasi-ballad “Pleasure”, then “Spiral Galaxy,” a long (seemingly latin-influenced? I’m not a theorist) stately march-type thing to round it off - I much prefer the B-side tracks but I might just need more time with the epic. The Bandcamp version is remastered, but no extra tracks or anything. They say:

Rehearsing and recording at the Choreographer's Workshop gave ample time to develop ideas without a nudgy A&R exec watching the clock or chiseling the budget. This self-controlled environment (and the usual ad hoc recording quality) marks Other Planes. The arrangements breathe, they evolve unhurriedly, and there's much open space. This is music by process. In contrast to the muscularity of free jazz, Sun Ra's leader-directed improvisations have an orchestrated feel, a pace that juxtaposes the pastoral with sporadic bursts of frenzy and much rhythmic variety. Sunny's love of percussion permeates these sessions. The works proceed with great deliberation, but they move.

The cover most people know (and the one I have) is this one:

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On June 15, 1964, Sun Ra and a 15-piece band (the largest he had played with since Chicago) were booked at the Cellar Cafe, a coffeehouse on West 91st Street. Per Szwed:

“The crowd which turned out for this concert and one by Archie Shepp encouraged Dixon to stage a four-night festival of “the new thing,” a music still too new to be named or defined, but which was audaciously emerging in the face of a resistant jazz mainstream.”

This results in the formation of the Jazz Composers Guild, and some fortuitous connections will come from that later on.

ha that pink and blue sleeve always makes me think of the eye-bleeding color schemes of early Stereolab sleeves

1964 - Judson Hall, New York, Dec. 31, 1964 (Sun Ra With Pharoah Sanders and Black Harold)

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Recorded as part of the “Four Days In December” concert series put on by the short-lived Jazz Composers’ Guild, released as an LP on Saturn in 1976, after two previous failed attempts to issue it. Some wild piano flourishes lead into a full fledged horn battle, and the music remains mostly free.

The Bandcamp version has what I think is the complete show, or near to it, with a lot of extra material added, as well as exhaustive notes on the gig. I was previously unfamiliar with this one. Clifford Jarvis continues to be a total badass on drums. John Gilmore was working somewhere else during this gig (see Bandcamp writeup) and is not present.

Important side note: In the audience at this gig was ESP label boss Bernard Stollman, and he liked what he heard. Soon he would put out the first non-Saturn LP since 1961.

before the reissues pharaoh sanders and black harold was one of the hardest ra albums to find bootleg copies of - as far as the "free jazz" era is concerned this is one of my favorite documents of it

MONDAY NIGHT INTERLUDE (added to Spotify)

"Twilight" - 1964-65

"Twilight," a previously unreleased recording that might have originated at the Tip-Top Club, is marred by significant noise, possibly from poor storage, tape degradation, or sub-par recording conditions. The track may have appeared on an obscure Saturn release or demo, as the surface noise sounds like a poor vinyl pressing or an acetate cutting. The instrumentation sounds like celeste, oboe, French horn, and percussion. Sunny had just two regular French horn players over the years, and Vincent Chancey wasn’t yet on the scene. That leaves Robert Northern as the only other possibility, which would date the track to late 1964 or early 1965.

Bandcamp link (track 6)

this sounds fine to me, and is lovely to boot

hey everyone I'm taking a break today, also I still need to listen to the last half of the Judson Hall concert

thank you! i'm doing some massive catching up

never heard Twilight or the Judson Hall show before

Solar Myth Approach Vol. 1 is an old favorite of mine. Adventures of Bugs Hunter! Great news about the new remasters.

this "Discipline 9" from the Judson Hall show is very pleasing, it's long and spacy. Karl asked earlier what the setlists were like, well this is the earliest example I know of - the next live things come in '66.

forgot to post before I left the house and my post is at home in a text file.

so everyone gets one more day of listening before starting 1965.

"Magic City" not on Spotify :(

Filed under "Sun Ra & His Arkestra"
https://open.spotify.com/album/4hqD5lN02dq75HeiP9TtNf?si=hHoIiEKASWOLMnM90b62LQ