Sun Ra - A Quiet Place In The Universe (1977) released 1994

 I love these stories of mysterious and convoluted releases.  The story of this one may be the knottiest of all the Sun Ra releases.  

Chris Trent:

I was involved with Leo in one of the releases of A Night in East Berlin: working out what was on some of the tapes which had become entangled with the various issues, and writing liner notes.

Originally A Night in East Berlin was a Saturn cassette, sold at gigs by the Arkestra. In the late 1980s Leo Records did a deal with Sun Ra, and released it as an LP, somewhat re-edited, but without additional material.

When it became time for a CD issue, Leo for chose to add as a filler part of another Sun Ra tape they had purchased earlier. Later still, Leo decided that this other tape would make a good release in its own right, and issued it complete as A Quiet Place in the Universe: it is a recording from around 1977, an unedited section of a concert performance which includes two Sun Ra compositions not available anywhere else on CD or LP.

This release of A Quiet Place meant that Leo at that point had a Sun Ra CD on the market which partially duplicated the East Berlin CD. Their response to this was to issue a different A Night in East Berlin on CD, keeping the same catalogue number as the old one(!), but replacing the music from the A Quiet Place session with another filler titled My Brothers the Wind & Sun No 9. This new filler had, for some strange reason, been sold to Leo as "recorded in Europe in 1990", but it turned out really to come from one of the Hidden Fire Saturn LPs, recorded in New York in 1988 — the very last Saturn releases.

So there exist one Saturn and three Leo editions of A Night in East Berlin, all of which differ from each other in some way! That's not quite the end of the story, however: the concert was also broadcast, unedited, on East German TV in 1988, as two 45 minute shows. It would make a superb video release — the music really gains extra impact in that format — but sadly, I'm not aware that anyone has plans for a video issue of it.

246. [212] Sun Ra & his Arkestra

1. A Quiet Place in the Universe [Sun Ra] (6:40)
2. I Pharaoh (Friendly Galaxy No. 2) [Sun Ra] (18:52)

For tracks 1-2 - "Suggested personnel (almost certainly incomplete)":
Ahmed Abdullah-tp;
Akh Tal Ebah-tp, voc;
Vincent Chancey-frn;
Craig Harris-tb;
Marshall Allen-as, fl;
Pat Patrick-as;
John Gilmore-ts, announcements;
Eloe Omoe-as, bcl, fl;
Danny Ray Thompson-bars, fl;
James Jacson-bsn, Inf-d, fl;
Sun Ra-org, syn, voc;
unknown-b;
Luqman Ali-d;
poss. Atakatune-cga;
poss. Eddie Thomas-perc;
June Tyson-voc
unidentified female-voc.

"The tape from which this CD derives is one of those which were occasionally sold or distributed by Sun Ra outside the Arkestra.... The master copy has merely a handwritten label identifying several track titles.... To deal with the date ... it seems highly likely to me that this concert is from 1976-7, made during Vincent Chancey's first stay with the Arkestra, and near the start of one of Pat Patrick's absences."

3. Images [Sun Ra] (6:12)
Ra-org;
Vincent Chancey-frh;
unknown-d. Probably
France, early 1980s

4. Love in Outer Space [Sun Ra] (11:46)
5. I'll Never Be the Same [Malneck, Signorelli, Kahn] (3:46)
6. Space Is the Place [Sun Ra] (3:15)
For tracks 4-6:
Ra-org, syn, voc;
unknown-tp;
Pat Patrick-as;
Marshall Allen-as;
John Gilmore-ts;
Eloe Omoe-as, bcl;
James Jacson-bsn, perc;
Danny Ray Thompson-bs;
unknown-b; unknown-d;
unknown-cga;
unknown-perc;
June Tyson-voc.
Live concert, probably in France, 1985. I'll Never Be the Same is not listed on the label. [rlc]
Total time : 50:31

Titles, dates, and above quotations from the CD's booklet by Chris Trent.

Basic information from the Sun Ra discography

A Quiet Place In The Universe

FLAC

or

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