2nd Chance: Sun Ra - Strange Strings (1967)

  
Recorded NYC 1966-1967 

Strange Strings is one of the most obscure and downright weird recordings in all of Sun Ra’s immense (and weird) discography. By 1966, Ra had acquired a selection of odd stringed instruments – ukuleles, kotos, zithers, etc. – to be played exclusively here by members of the Arkestra. That the musicians did not how to play them was the whole point, it was, according to Ra, “a study in ignorance.” Structurally, the music builds on the kind of conducted-improvisation found on The Magic City (1965) (Evidence CD), but the unfamiliar instruments create a truly otherworldly din. Homemade metallic instruments clatter and thrum while strings are plucked, bowed, struck and scraped; sometimes drums and tympani pound ominously. Thick reverb saturates or, at other times, dries up the acoustic, creating shifting and distorted sonic perspectives. Sounding more like Iannis Xenakis than Fletcher Henderson, this stuff is definitely not for the faint of heart! The bonus track, “Door Squeak” features Sun Ra on, yes, a loudly squeaking door (which actually sounds very much like the MiniMoog, which he would take up years later) while more strange strings chatter in the background. Detailed liner notes by Hal Rammel and super deluxe packaging make this CD a must have for the connoisseur of Sun Ra’s furthest interplanetary journeys.

from NuVoid's Sun Ra Sunday blog

Door Squeak

Strange Strings is a somewhat legendary album from the mid-'60s. "Worlds Approaching" is a great tune, anchored by a bass ostinato and timpani and featuring several fantastic solos, including Marshall Allen on oboe, Robert Cummings on bass clarinet, John Gilmore on tenor, and Sun Ra on electric piano. Off and on throughout the tune, Bugs Hunter applies near-lethal doses of reverb, giving the piece a very odd but interesting sound. "Strange Strings" is one of those songs that is likely to inspire some sort of "you call that music?" comment from your grandmother, or even from open-minded friends. It sounds like they raided the local pawnshop for anything with strings on it, then passed them out to the bandmembers. It's difficult to tell if some of these instruments have been prepared in some way, or if they're simply being played by untutored hands. There are also lots of drums and some viola playing from Ronnie Boykins that is also treated heavily with reverb. Despite the cacophony, there is a definite ebb and flow to the piece and what seem like different movements or themes. Whatever you think of the music contained, there's no denying that it produced some of the most remarkable sounds of the mid-'60s. If you don't like "out," stay clear of this one. [Atavistic reissued the album in 2009.]

AMG Review by Sean Westergaard

Click to enlarge

123. [109] Sun Ra and his Astro-Infinity Arkestra

Sun Ra (Wurlitzer ep, perc); Ali Hassan (tb); Marshall Allen (as, ob); Danny Davis (as, fl); John Gilmore (ts); Pat Patrick (bars, fl); Robert Cummings (bcl); Ronnie Boykins (b); Clifford Jarvis (d, tymp); James Jacson (log drum, perc).

Rehearsal, New York City, around 1966

Worlds Approaching (Ra)

Poor recording quality indicates a different session from the rest of the Strange Strings album.  This session could have been made a year or two earlier than the rest of the album.

Worlds Approaching

124. [110] Marshall Allen (strings); Danny Davis (strings); John Gilmore (strings); Pat Patrick (strings); Robert Cummings (strings); Ali Hassan (strings); Carl Nimrod (strings, perc); Ronnie Boykins (b, vla, dutar); Sun Ra (lightning drum, tymp); James Jacson (log drums); Clifford Jarvis (tymp, perc); Art Jenkins [Thlan Aldridge] (strings, space voice).

Rehearsal, New York City, late 1966

Strange Strings (Ra)
Strange Strings (Ra) (cont.)

Thoth Intergalactic KH-5472, Strange Strings, was issued in 1967 (it is described by Tam Fiori in the January 1968 issue of Jazz and Pop).  It also circulated under the catalog number 502.  "Strange Strings" begins as the second track on Side A ("featuring vocal by Arthur Jenkins"), and the continuation ("featuring lightning drum") fills all of Side B.  Some previous discographies give 1964 as the recording date, but John Gilmore places it after Nothing Is.

What were the strings?  Gilmore described his as "a little Japanese instrument"; in a Melody Maker article, Fiofori refers to "Chinese lutes, moon-guitars, mandolin, bass, koto."  In 1966 photos of a rehearsal in the Sun Studios (by Val Wilmer, in Omniverse Sun Ra), Boykins is shown playing a dutar, a bowed lute used in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (thanks to Ralph Pleshar for background on the dutar), as well as a more Oriental instrument.  Hartmut Geerken points out that none of the strings were actually electric, though they were closely miked and in some cases subjected to reverb (Carl Nimrod was incorrectly credited with "electric strings").  Geerken identifies one of Ra's "sun harps" as a Ukrainian bandura (it is shown on the cover of Holiday for Soul Dance); it is possible that one of the other Arkestra members played the bandura on this date.

On the jacket Jenkins is billed as "Thlan Aldridge," but according to articles in Jazz Wereld, August and October 1968, he and Aldridge are one and the same.  Indeed, the Carnegie Hall program for April 12-13, 1968, lists "Art Jenkins (= Thlan Aldridge)."

from The Earthly Recordings 2nd ed

 Sun Ra and his Astro-Infinity Arkestra

Strange Strings

1.  Worlds Approaching   10:17

2.  Strange Strings   12:48

3.  Strange Strange   20:24

4.  Door Squeak   10:29

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Strange Strings (180g LP Reissue)

1. Worlds Approaching   10:10
2. Strings Strange   12:27

3. Strange Strange   19:58

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Sun Ra - Egyptian Fantasy from Beets: A Collection of Jazz Songs (1992)

"Egyptian Fantasy (Carefree)" has long been one of my Sun Ra concert favorites.  The hypnotic repetition of the theme makes for a great foundation over which the Arkestra's tone scientists can experiment freely and passionately (as you will hear).  Thanks to Mattia for requesting and to dmatlb for originally sharing with us.

(give it a moment - the track starts quietly)

Sun Ra - Egyptian Fantasy (rec. 1990)

671. [443]  Sun Ra and the Arkestra

Beets: A Collection of Jazz Songs

Sun Ra (p, syn); Michael Ray (tp); Ahmed Abdullah (tp); Tyrone Hill (tb); Marshall Allen (as, fl); Noël Scott (as); John Gilmore (ts, timb); James Jacson (bsn, Inf-d); John Ore (b); Buster Smith (d); Ron McBee (cga, perc); Elson Nascimento (surdo grande, perc); Jorge Silva (repinique, perc).

prob. Skeppsholmen, Stockholm,
June or July 1990

Egyptian Fantasy [Carefree] (Ra)

The complete version of this track (clocking in at 13:06) was released in 1992 on the various-artists compilation Elemental/t.e.c. 90902 [CD], Beets: A Collection of Jazz Songs.  An edited version of less than 4 minutes was released in 1990 on Elemental/t.e.c. 90901 [LP].  Tom Timony of Elemental/t.e.c. told Malcolm Humes that the track was recorded live in Europe, "maybe Sweden or Switzerland."  The "Egyptian Fantasy" from Zurich (July 17, 1990) is very similar in approach to this one, and only about one minute longer.  However, Bengt Berg recalls a performance by the Arkestra at the jazz festival at Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, around this same time, at which Scott and McBee were present.  Personnel identified by rlc.  According to Callins, the Arkestra remained in Europe for the entire month of July.

According to Malcolm Humes, this collection was also sold as a cassette encased in what appeared to be a can of… beets.  The other artists were Fred Frith, Club Foot Orchestra, Peter Fair, ROVA, Machete Ensemble of San Francisco, Tom Cora, Anthony Braxton/Gino Robair, Eric Drew Feldman, Snakefinger, B. Singer, Sonny Simmons, Winston Tong, and Big Butter.

If this only whets your appetite, check out the Lugano video (June 27, 1990)  recently offered at Solar Flares.  Thanks again, Ruby!!

Lugano Switzerland (June 27, 1990)

"Egyptian Fantasy (Carefree)" from Beets: A Collection of Jazz Songs

FLAC & 320

RS
HF

Sun Ra - The Other Side of the Sun (1980)

The Other Side of the Sun is a great example (among many) of Ra's ability to deftly use traditional Big Band Jazz as a launch pad for his exploratory adventures.  The wonderful sound and inclusion of some standards makes this a nice choice as an introduction for those unfamiliar and wary of Ra's reputation for expressing Interstellar Chaos through music.

Space Fling

The Sun Ra Arkestra looks both forwards and backwards in time on this obscure small label LP. Ten years earlier, one could not have imagined Ra and his men romping through "On the Sunny Side of the Street" or reinventing "Flamingo." However, those versions certainly sound quite original, and there is no mistaking the band for any other orchestra on "Space Fling," "Manhattan Cocktail" and the trademark "Space Is the Place." The music on this album features a version of the Arkestra consisting of six reeds (including John Gilmore and Marshall Allen), three trumpets (including Michael Ray and Eddie Gale), two trombones (with a young Robin Eubanks), the French horn of Vincent Chancey, guitarist Dale Williams, three bassists, four percussionists, singer June Tyson and the leader's keyboards. A stimulating set.

AMG Review by Scott Yanow

Manhattan Cocktail

281. [224]  Sun Ra and his Arkestra
Sun Ra (p, Fender Rhodes ep, perc, bells, voc); Walter Miller (tp); Michael Ray (tp); Eddie Gale (tp); Tony bethel (tb); Robin Eubanks (tb); Vincent Chancey (Fr hn); Marshall Allen (as, fl); Danny Davis (as, fl); John Gilmore (ts, timb); James Jacson (bsn, fl, Inf-d); Eloe Omoe (bcl, as); Danny Ray Thompson (bars, fl, perc); Dale Williams (eg); Oscar Brown Jr. (eb); Bob Cunningham (b); Ben "Jereeboo" Henderson [Jeribu Shahid] (b); Atakatune (cga, perc); Luqman Ali (d, perc); William Goffigan (perc); Eddie Thomas (perc); June Tyson (voc).

Blue Rock Studios, NYC,
November 1, 1978
and January 4, 1979

Space Fling (Ra)
Flamingo (Grouya-Anderson)
Space Is The Place (Ra) [JT voc]
The Sunny Side of the Street (McHugh)
Manhattan Cocktail (Ra)

Sweet Earth SER 1003, The Other Side of the Sun, was released in 1980.  All information from the album jacket.  Personnel is collective, and it is not known at which session individual tracks were recorded.  It is a reasonable bet, however, that "Space Fling" was made on November 1.

from Campbell / Trent  The Earthly Recordings 2nd ed.

Sun Ra
The Other Side of the Sun
Sweet Earth SER 1003 (1980)

1. Space Fling   7:38
2. Flamingo   4:43
3. Space Is The Place   9:48

4. The Sunny Side Of The Street   9:35
5. Manhattan Cocktail   9:54

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 This is a rip that I found online (in some far off [unknown] place, many light-years in space).  I attempted my own rip but this sounds much better than what my copy would yield.  Many THANKS to the original ripper.

Aren't these pictures of the band playing before Bill Sebastian's OVC amazing?

More OVC here.

Sun Ra - Live at the Hackney Empire (1994)

Live At The Hackney Empire may be the definitive latter-day Sun Ra recording for a couple of reasons. First, it's a full two-and-a-half hour concert on two CDs, so you get the actual flow Sun Ra programmed into his performance to showcase the different musical facets of the Arkestra -- swirling cosmic outbursts, swing-era big band, vocal chants rooted in Africa by way of Saturn. (Amazingly, there's hardly any duplication of material from the concert the night before with a dozen-odd French symphony musicians that Leo released as Pleiades).

Second is the presence of guest players (or Arkestra members for the tour) like Charles Davis, with his robust baritone sax, India Cooke's high-flying violin, and Talvin Singh's tablas in the percussion section. That means new voices who definitely make their presence felt, so bingo, it's already not just another Sun Ra release.

The space-age atonal outbursts are mostly front-loaded on the three long opening pieces. As Astro-Black fades in over drums, Davis and Cooke immediately take impressive solo spins, and the crowd roars at the end of 18 minutes that sure don't feel like it. "Other Voices" quickly ventures into abstract textural zones and it calls to mind how cinemagraphic, how full of soundtrack colors, Sun Ra's music can be. Davis' baritone slashes through and Michael Ray's trumpet flashes over the top, the Ra tosses some space-sonic keyboard discords and his peaceful piano transitions into "Planet Earth Day." Back at the movies again, the group is gathering momentum with thundering drums and big band stylings before Marshall Allen goes stratospheric and the lurching riff behemoth subsides behind Kash Killion's cello.

"Hocus Pocus" is in-the-pocket big band romping with strong John Gilmore solos on clarinet and tenor bracketing Tyrone Hill's brassy trombone outing. Gilmore shoulders much of the solo load on "Blue Lou," a big band at the speed-of-sound outing with hot jazz drumming, before Singh and Elson Nascimento hit the final tablas-congas breakdown. "Face The Music" swings out in wonderfully joyous fashion with massed vocals before Noel Scott's great alto solo, and Davis galvanizes again -- his baritone's brawny tone really cuts a visceral swath through the essentially light swing of Sun Ra's Arkestra.

The string trio with guest bassist John Ore soloing fades into more cinematic big band to start the second disc. Davis is solid and Cooke shines, but the real story is the rock-solid, swinging support from the drummers. Sun Ra's drummers rarely receive any mention (quick, can you name one?) but Earl "Buster" Smith and Clifford Barbaro really drive the Arkestra all through Live At The Hackney Empire. The mood-lightening "East Of Sun" is almost cartoon music (that's not a criticism) but the lively, vibrant "Sunset On The Nile" falls victim to the perils of set flow with overextended vocal exchanges.

That changes as soon as Ra's piano leads into the blues ("Skimming and Loping") and the Arkestra takes off on a swing thing for serious dancing, the drums rockin' away behind the solos (and salvaging some slack spots); just listen to the Ra's pure rock & roll left hand heading into the home stretch. The Noble Sissle-Fletcher Henderson chestnut "Yeah Man!" brings swing era exuberance to the fore -- let's hear it for the drummers again -- before "We Travel The Spaceways" and "They'll Come Again" trail off into vocal chants as Sun Ra space-sounds out. The musical momentum dissipates, but it was probably a natural winding down for audience and the Arkestra alike after two-and-a-half hours.

Fans of Sun Ra's more adventurous explorations may find fault with him backing away from them to move back to his big band roots, and the slight versions of "Prelude To A Kiss" and "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" may provide fuel for the traditionalist critics who have long decried the Arkestra as a shuck 'n' jive freak show spectacle. It has its weak moments, but there's almost certainly no more complete document of what Sun Ra and his Arkestra sounded like as its leader's life wound down than on Live At The Hackney Empire. The liner notes say a projected U.K. television documentary on Sun Ra based on the concert fell through -- let's hope it sees the light of day sometime soon because this would be a performance worth seeing as well as hearing. 

AMG Review by Don Snowden

693. [453] Sun Ra and the Year 2000 Myth Science Arkestra

Live at the Hackney Empire

Le Sony'r Ra [Sun Ra] (p, syn, voc); Michael Ray (tp, voc); Jothan Callins (tp); Tyrone Hill (tb); Marshall Allen (as, fl, ob, picc); John Gilmore (ts, cl, timb, voc); Noël Scott (as, cacl); Charles Davis (bars); James Jacson (bsn, Inf-d); India Cooke (vln); Stephen "Kash" Killion (clo); John Ore (b); Clifford Barbaro (d); Earl C. "Buster" Smith (d); Elson Dos Santos Nascimento (surdo grande, perc); Talvin Singh (tabla, voc); June Tyson (voc, vln).

Hackney Empire Theatre, London,
October 28, 1990

1st Set:
Astro Black (Ra) [JT voc]
Other Voices (Ra)
Planet Earth Day [Mythic 1] (Ra)
Prelude to a Kiss (Ellington)
Hocus Pocus (Hudson)
Love in Outer Space (Ra) [MR, JT voc]
Bue Lou (Sampson)
Face the Music (Ra) [ens voc]

2nd Set:
Strings Sings (Ra) /
Discipline 27-II (Ra) /
I'll Wait for You (Ra) [SR, JT, ens voc]
East of the Sun (Bowman) [JG voc]
Somewhere over the Rainbow (Arlen-Harburg)
Frisco Fog (Carr-Roberts)
Sunset on the Nile (Ra) [SR, JT, ens voc)
Skimming and Loping (Ra)
Yeah Man! (Sissle-Henderson)
We Travel the Spaceways (Ra) [ens voc]

encore:
They'll Come Back (Ra) [JT, SR, ens voc]

Leo LR214/215, Live at the Hackney Empire, was released on CD in December 1994.  On this release, LR 214 was mistakenly labeled "Disk 2" and LR 215 was labeled "Disk 1."  The entire concert was used on the CDs, except for a 2-minute segment plagued by technical recording faults.  All information from ct.  Personnel based on ct's observation with additional help from Dan Plonsey, the credits to Pleiades, and a reviewer in the Wire, who supplied Singh's full name.  ct points out that the first percussion break at the beginning of the first set is a short timbales solo by John Gilmore.

Titles on the CD were supplied by members of the Arkestra; in some cases, improvisations are attached to the preceding or following title, and both "We Travel the Spaceways" and "They'll Come Back" interweave other space chants and sermonizing by The Ra.  The concert was filmed by Chris Foster, and a video documentary based on this concert was planned at one time for British Channel 4, but it was later canceled.

The October trip was a short one -- just the Orléans and London concerts.  According to Ahmed Abdullah and Jothan Callins, the Arkestra completed no fewer than seven trips to Europe in 1990 (March, April, May, June, July, August, and October).

from Campbell / Trent - The Earthly Recordings 2nd ed.

Sun Ra and the Year 2000 Myth Science Arkestra
Live at the Hackney Empire
Leo Records CD LR214 / LR215 (1994)

Disc 1
1.  Astro Black   18:18
2.  Other Voices   14:13
3.  Planet Earth Day   11:57
4.  Prelude To A Kiss   4:51
5.  Hocus Pocus   3:38
6.  Love In Outer Space   6:44
7.  Blue Lou   5:01
8.  Face The Music   10:04

Disc 2
1.  String Singh / Discipline 27-II / I'll Wait For You   12:56
2.  East Of The Sun   3:37
3.  Somewhere Over The Rainbow   9:37
4.  Frisco Fog   3:14
5.  Sunset On The Nile   12:06
6.  Skimming And Loping   9:29
7.  Yeah Man!   3:15
8.  We Travel The Spaceways   12:30
9.  They'll Come Back   7:12

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RS Disc 2

HF Disc 1
HF Disc 2

or

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RS Disc 1
RS Disc 2

HF Disc 1
HF Disc 2

Sun Ra at Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio

A few years ago, John Corbett and his wife, Terri Kapsalis, donated a treasure trove - a historical cornucopia of sounds, articles, ephemera, and images that had been tossed into boxes, made ready for disposal, and subsequently rescued from Alton Abraham's estate - to the University of Chicago and Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio (ESS).  Corbett and Kapsalis mention the event during the Duke University Sun Ra Symposium in 2009.

Since,  ESS has allowed limited access to the archives and I am aware of three artists' works spread over four releases.  I believe that these pieces are available for purchase online and due to the fact that most have only been recently released, I am hoping to draw attention to their efforts by offering streaming audio of the works but will not be offering downloads.  Please support them with the power of your purchase.

First out of the gate was Audio/Video artist Brian Harnetty.  Brian Harnetty is a musician and artist from Ohio, and his work involves overlooked elements of sound.  Many of his pieces transform found material––including field recordings, transcriptions, and historic recordings––into personal sound worlds.  For the past several years, this has led to a focus on projects with specific archives, including the Berea College Appalachian Sound Archives in Kentucky, and the Sun Ra/El Saturn Creative Audio Archive in Chicago.  His music and installations have been performed and shown in America and Europe.  Recordings are available on Atavistic Records, Ruminance (Europe), and Scioto Records.

brianharnetty(dot)com

When Brian Harnetty was commissioned to work with the Sun Ra/El Saturn archives in Chicago, his goal was to develop a series of conversations with Sun Ra through the many recordings in the collection. On one level, the resulting pieces combine these diverse materials to create a sonic collage. On another level, Harnetty uses these elements to reveal multi-layered stories, drawing out the many connections and complexities of the Sun Ra archives.

For this 7" single, entitled "The Sociophonic Key," Harnetty has created a stand-alone work drawn from "The Star Faced One," a 2010 sound installation at the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago. Despite the variety of samples used many subtle relationships are heard––both literal and fantastic––from Sun Ra rehearsing a group of children fading into an answering machine, to the intensity of a gospel preacher alongside the Arkestra’s invitation to join them in outer space.

"It is a huge, rambling collection of recordings that are only loosely held together by the presence of Sun Ra," explains Harnetty. "There are rehearsals, live concerts, lectures, TV shows, and so on. I spent most of my time listening closely, as a fan and out of curiosity, searching for correlations, links, and routes of connection." In the end, these recordings create networks of reference and dialogue that both point to the past and imagine new futures.

Visit Bandcamp to purchase.

Late last year, on Cuneiform Records, Living by Lanterns released the CD Old Myth/New Science.

"While New Myth/Old Science deliberately avoids any obvious Ra intergalactic tones, it’s joyful enough to make a visitor from Saturn smile." – DownBeat

Co-led by Mike Reed and Jason Adasiewicz, two of the fastest-rising young stars of Chicago's insanely vibrant jazz scene, Living by Lanterns was formed specifically to bring together four of Chicago's and four of New York's leading players for a special and unique project concept.

Commissioned by Experimental Sound Studio (ESS), the music was created in response to material contained in ESS’s vast Sun Ra Audio Archive. Rather than a Sun Ra tribute, Reed and Adasiewicz have crafted a melodically rich, harmonically expansive body of themes orchestrated from fragments extracted from a rehearsal tape marked "NY 1961", featuring Ra on electric piano, John Gilmore on tenor sax and flute, and Ronnie Boykins on bass.

The tunes on Old Myth/New Science were written by the co-leaders based on the 1961 tape. That tape contains no compositions per-se, but there are a lot of stream-of-consciousness ideas and some of these ideas were teased out, hugely expanded upon and turned into the pieces heard here.

"The tape is clearly these ideas they’re hashing out,” Adasiewicz says. “Some of this stuff sounds kind of squirrelly. Some is insanely beautiful....it became our personal arrangements."

"After figuring out the band, the first step in the process was to completely dismiss the idea of commenting or honoring Sun Ra," Reed says. "The more interesting idea was of creating new music using someone's unfinished, unwanted and abandoned material."

Reed and Adasiewicz fully considered the possibilities of taking this very unrefined material and teasing out raw ideas, bits and undeveloped fragments from it, and developing and composing them into full compositions that the band perform and make their own. The music is rich and exciting; full and sparse; mysterious and inviting; challenging and tuneful! And what a band!

Greg Ward – alto saxophone

Taylor Ho Bynum – cornet

Ingrid Laubrock – tenor saxophone

Tomeka Reid – cello

Mary Halvorson – guitar

Jason Adasiewicz – vibraphone

Joshua Abrams – bass

Tomas Fujiwara – drums

Mike Reed – drums, electronics

For Mike Reed, there’s something inherently amusing about assembling such a talent-laden crew to explore music that was discarded by Sun Ra. "We are bringing all these people together to make their mark," Reed says. "That was the premise. With so many leaders in the group and rising stars and collaborators, everybody is trying to make their way through this life. We’re working in the shadows and you have to put a light on."

D/L and hard copy available for purchase at CuneiformRecords.

 Filmmaker Cauleen Smith wraps up her 2-year Chicago residency and research on Sun Ra with her exhibition The Journeyman - an installation, recording studio, and library about artistic process, research and the relationship between an artist and the subjects they revere. The exhibition will be accompanied by the release of a limited edition vinyl record mixed by Smith that includes recordings she made over the course of her project in Chicago and materials found in the Sun Ra archive at Experimental Sound Studio.

Experimental filmmaker Smith has been a “long-term” resident of threewalls’, first joining us in 2010 as part of the Studio Chicago program in conjunction with the Sullivan Galleries at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Initially Smith intended to extend her on-going film work on jazz, radical black creativity, and the American urban matrix to a work on Chicago and the legend and impact of phenom Sun Ra. Her research led her down a winding path to residencies at the University of Chicago, Center for Race and Culture, and Experimental Sound Studio’s Sun Ra archives.

Between time spent in Chicago and teaching in San Diego, Smith produced The Solar Flare Arkestral Marching Band, a series of marching band flash mob street performances inspired by Sun Ra’s Arkestra where Chicago Southside high-school marching bands would play a single Sun Ra song arranged for them by local musicians and composers. This series was recorded as part of a number of short films that Smith made while in the city, culminating in two exhibitions: A Seed is a Star, on exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (May 12-September 16th, 2012) and The Journeyman at threewalls. Both exhibitions cultivate a specific, immersive experience or manipulation of space, with her exhibition at threewalls’ generating the character of research, with study, listening and recording spaces butted up against each other in a meditation on the process of research, creation and the making of myth– both in homage to Sun Ra’s own intensive auto-didact methods and Smith’s experience studying his extensive archives.

Cauleen Smith (born 1967) is a filmmaker whose work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the black imagination. Smith’s films have been featured in group exhibitions at the Houston Contemporary Art Museum; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; and the New Museum, New York. Beginning in 1994, she wrote, directed, and produced her first narrative feature film, Drylongso (1998), which was selected for the American Spectrum of Sundance Film Festival, and won best feature film at both the Urbanworld Film Festival and the Los Angeles Pan-African Film Festival Smith earned an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Please visit Three Walls for more info.

Most recently, Atavistic has released Brian Harnetty's CD, The Star-Faced One, arranged from pieces culled from his audio visual installation.  From Brian's Website:

(It is) an album-length version of a 2010 sound installation based on the Sun Ra/El Saturn Audio Archive, which was commissioned with the generous support of the Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago. The title is borrowed from a poem by Konstantine Balmont (via Igor Stravinsky), which is appropriate for the illusive and enigmatic Sun Ra:

“His eyes were like stars, like flames which furrow space.  His visage was like the sun when it shines at its zenith.  The luminous colors of the heavens, purple, azure, and gold, dappled the gorgeous robe he wore to be reborn among us....”

On one level, this piece is a way to access a vast collection and explore the many facets, dichotomies, contradictions, and beauty contained within.  The collection in itself is already a kind of large-scale composition, a finite world that points to the universe.  My contribution is but one of many pieces that can come from it.

I am not a jazz musician.  I cannot lay claim to Sun Ra’s history, nor can I ever fully understand him or his music.  But I can listen, intently, and enter a dialogue, bringing my own knowledge and thought and experience.  How to enter a dialogue with Sun Ra?  Start playing along, always listening with imagination and empathy....soon, your own voice emerges, runs along side, converses with, connects, while all along staying independent; they are “co-habitating” together.

In this conversation, there is also the gift economy: finding a way to bring the archives out of the defined world and into the daylight, to hold them, and pass them on.  Their energy lies in the exchange, and is how they can stay alive and in motion.

This recent release is available at Amazon and elsewhere.

“Brian Harnetty’s The Star-Faced One travels the peculiarities and particularities of a collection of interplanetary fragment-gems: the Sun Ra/El Saturn Collection in the Creative Audio Archive at ESS. His excursion into this unsystematic cache of rehearsal tapes, recitations, studio recordings, concert documents, and unlabeled appropriations, accidentally handed down to us through an unforgiving yet generous history, stakes no claim to Sun Ra’s legacy––something which speaks for itself over and over again––but instead takes a joyful listener’s ‘cosmic pathway’ into its own unique imagistic swirl. Brian and his musical collaborators proceed in a spirit of serious play, respectful intrusion, and insistent openness, releasing hi-, lo-, and mid-fi sounds from the past into a new future of revelatory listening.”

Lou Mallozzi
Director, Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago

Sun Ra - Super-Sonic Sounds (1974)

In 1972 Ed Michel, the producer of the recording Space Is the Place, offered Sun Ra and Alton Abraham a lucrative contract on behalf of ABC/Impulse to rerelease the bulk of the Saturn catalog and to go into the studio and make new records.  Thirty reissues were prepared for release, an introductory sampler called Welcome to Saturn, and four new albums were recorded, Astro Black (1972), Pathways to Unknown Worlds (1975), Crystal Spears, and Cymbals (both possibly 1972).  Over the next three years Impulse issued two of the new recordings, Astro Black (in quadraphonic sound) and Pathways to Unknown Worlds, and reissued Angels and Demons at Play, Super-Sonic Jazz (under the title Supersonic Sounds), Jazz in Silhouette, The Nubians of Plutonia, Fate in a Pleasant Mood, Bad and Beautiful, The Magic City, and Atlantis, all with new art work and press announcements.

But then ABC abruptly canceled the project, cutting out the records already issued and leaving the rest of the reissues and Crystal Spears and Cymbals unreleased.  With the records cut out and dumped into sale bins of record stores Sun Ra received no more  payment for sales:

I finally consented to make some for them and what did they do?  They cut the ends off so I don't get any royalties.  Impulse was going to spend almost a million dollars in publicity.  They were going to put out fourteen LPs at one time.  Something happened where they didn't keep their contract.

Nonetheless, Impulse was the one major label with a commitment to the new jazz, having recorded John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and most of the major figures, so their embrace of Sun Ra saw to it that his records reached a much greater audience and gave him new press attention and reviews.Szwed - Space Is The Place - The Lives and Times of Sun Ra (1997) pp 333-334

Sun Ra had only been heading his Arkestra for a couple of years when they recorded the 12 songs featured on this 1956 session. But while the arrangements, ensemble work, and solos are not as ambitious, expansive, or free-wheeling as they became on later outings, the groundwork was laid on such cuts as "India," "Sunology," and one of the first versions of "Blues at Midnight." Ra's band already had the essential swinging quality and first-class soloists, and he had gradually challenged them with compositions that did not rely on conventional hard bop riffs, chord changes, and structure but demanded a personalized approach and understanding of sound and rhythm far beyond standard thinking. You can hear in Ra's solos and those of John Gilmore, Pat Patrick, Charles Davis, and others an emerging freedom and looseness which would explode in the future.
AMG Review by Ron Wynn

31. [18]  Le Sun-Ra and his Arkistra

Sun RA (p.); Art Hoyle (tp); Julian Priester (tb); John Gilmore (ts); Laurdine "Pat" Patrick (bars); Wilburn Green (eb); Robert Barry (d).

 RCA Studios, Chicago,
around February 1956

Super Blonde (Ra)
Soft Talk (Priester)

Both of these tracks appeared in 1957 on the first Saturn LP, Super-Sonic Jazz.  The serial number of this LP was originally H7OP0216 (thanks to Alden Kimbrough for this information; the matrix numbers were H7OP0216 and H7OP0217).  The serial number was subsequently changed to SR-LP 0216; in 1967, the LP was given the catalog number 204.  All tracks from this LP were reissued in 1974 on Impulse AS-9271, under the title Super Sonic Sounds.  "Super Blonde" was retitled "Super Bronze" on the Impulse release only.  All tracks reissued on Evidence 22015 [CD] in 1992 under the original title.

It seems likely now that everything on 29, 30, 31, and 32 was recorded at one session.  Unfortunately, only "Urnack" and "Medicine for a Nightmare" carry their original RCA-derived matrix numbers.  Julian Priester copyrighted "Soft Talk" and "Urnack" in late 1955.  Sun Ra (still using the name Herman Blount as well as Le Sony'r Ra) began copyrighting his compositions in earnest with "Satana and Saturn" on February 1, 1956.  "Satana" was never recorded; "Saturn Interlude" and "Saturn: Chorus" are the piece that is familiar to us.  On February 6, 1956, Sunny copyrighted "Super-Blonde" and "A Call for All Demons."  "Snomed Yballul (English pronunciation: Demon's Lullaby)" didn't get copyrighted till April 24, but sounds as though it came from this session.  Sunny also copyrighted "East of Uz" on February 1, and "Velvet" and "Beta-Beta" on February 6.
"Velvet" was subsequently recorded by the Arkestra; the other two were not, so far as we know, though "East of Uz" got its belated premiere on record in 1976, when Pat Patrick's Baritone Retinue included it in Patrick's only Saturn LP under his own name.

32. [20]  Sun Ra Arkestra

Super-Sonic Jazz /
The Singles

Sun Ra (Wurlitzer ep, p); Art Hoyle (tp); Julian Priester (tb); John Gilmore (ts); Laurdine "Pat" Patrick (bars); Wilburn Green (eb); Robert Barry (d); Jim Herndon (tymp, timb).

RCA Studios, Chicago,
around February 1956

Medicine for a Nightmare (Ra) [2nd version]
Medicine for a Nightmare (Ra) [alt.]

The previously unreleased alternate was discovered in 1993 during research on the Saturn singles; it was issued for the first time in September 1996, on the Saturn singles collection from Evidence (The Singles, Evidence 22164 [2 CDs]).  On the alternate take, Ra plays piano throughout.  Herndon was usually credited on Saturn jackets with playing "timbali"; according to Allan Chase, these were timbales tuned lower than usual.

These two performances of "Medicine" could have come from the next sessions in April or May, but they sound similar to the other February material.  Copyright dates provide no clues because Sunny did not register "Medicine for a Nightmare."

33. [19]  Sun Ra Arkestra

Super-Sonic Jazz

Sun Ra (p, Wurlitzer ep); James Scales (as); Wilburn Green (eb); John Gilmore (space bells, perc).

RCA Studios, Chicago, April-May 1956

Springtime in Chicago (Ra)

"Chicago in Springtime (Springtime in Chicago)" was copyrighted on May 21, 1956.  The later copyright date and the presence of James Scales (who was not in the "8 Rays of Jazz" earlier in the year) suggest a different recording date.

37. [23]  Le Sun Ra and his Arkestra

Super-Sonic Jazz

Sun Ra (p, Wurlitzer ep, space gong); Art Hoyle (tp, perc); Pat Patrick (as, perc); John Gilmore (ts, perc); Charles Davis (bars, perc); Victor Sproles (b); William Cochran (d); Jim Herndon (tymp, perc).

RCA Studios, Chicago,
around October 1956

India (Ra)
Sunology (Ra)
Advice to Medics (Ra) [ep only]
Sunology part II (Ra)
Kingdom of Not (Ra)
Portrait of the Living Sky (Ra) [no horns]
Blues at Midnight (Ra) [tp, ts, p, b, d only]
El Is a Sound of Joy (Ra)

H7OP)216, Super-Sonic Jazz, was the first album to be issued by Saturn (1957).  Its original matrix numbers, according to Alden Kimbrough and Peter Roberts, were H7OP0216 and H7OP0217; these indicate that the album was pressed by RCA Victor, and the H prefix stands for a 1957 pressing.  Alton Abraham says that this and other early Saturn albums were initially issued with blank covers (some may have been hand-decorated).  The first Saturn cover was made for this album; according to Abraham, it was silk-screened without printing.  Kimbrough, however, owns a copy with artwork by the same artist who did the original covers for Rocket Number Nine and Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy [Claude Dangerfield].

Subsequent issues of the album carried the serial number SR-LP 0216.  There are two later covers.  The first is pink-purple (or pale yellow) Bauhaus style with keyboard.  The second and more common is a blue or green view of the Void with solar symbols (this last was in circulation by the early '60s -- Kimbrough owns two copies with this cover and yellow labels -- and remained the cover of choice thereafter).  In 1967, this LP was gin the catalog number 204.  Around 1970, the album was reissued on Thoth Intergalactic, still with the catalog number 204 (Stephen Ramirez).

All tracks from the Saturn album were reissued in 1974 on Impulse AS-9271, under the title Super Sonic Sounds.  All tracks were reissued on Evidence 22015 [CD] in 1992 under the original title.  "Kingdom of Not" as also included in a 1997 Evidence-derived Sun Ra sampler on Japanese Paddle Wheel Records, KICJ 315.

Location from the Saturn liner notes.  Personnel based on Saturn credits.  The dates for these sessions can be pretty closely bracketed because Patrick is playing alto sax, Sproles is on bass, and no trombonist is present.  Julian Priester (who did not play with Sproles) departed from the Arkestra in September 1956.  Art Hoyle, in turn, left in December 1956 or soon thereafter to join Lionel Hampton's band (the latest date he has given is March 1957).  Moreover, several of the Ra tunes (everything but the keyboard improvisations and "Blues at Midnight") from this session were copyrighted on December 7.  The original title of "Kingdom of Not" was "Big Charles," and "El is a Sound of Joy" was originally called "El (House of Joy)."

The version of "El Is a Sound of Joy" from this session sounds embryonic compared to the more polished one found on Sound of Joy, which suggests that this session took place earlier.
from Campbell / Trent  The Earthly Recordings, 2nd ed.

Le Sun-Ra and his Arkestra
Super-Sonic Sounds
Impulse AS-9271 (1974)

1.  India   4:48
2.  Sunology   5:39
3.  Advice to Medics   2:02
4.  Super Bronze   2:33
5.  Soft Talk   2:42
6.  Sunology, Part II   7:03
7.  Kingdom of Not   5:25
8.  Portrait of the Living Sky   1:50
9.  Blues at Midnight   6:30
10. El is a Sound of Joy   3:55
11. Springtime in Chicago   3:51
12. Medicine for a Nightmare   2:26

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You can find the Evidence CD reissue of Super-Sonic Jazz HERE.

NOW! Please Contribute to Thomas Stanley - Only A Few Hours Left

Professor Stanley's project was successfully funded!  I'm really looking forward to reading his book.  Thanks to all who joined me in supporting the project. A personal meditation and scholarly commentary on the late jazz icon's enduring contributions to the beleaguered humans of planet Earth THE CLOCK IS TICKING....PLEASE SUPPORT THIS IMPORTANT WORK....MANY THANKS TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE PLEDGED THEIR SUPPORT Putting Sun Ra into Action: A Book Project Space Greetings, On Sunday, May 30, 1993, I received a call from veteran WPFW jazz and blues programmer Rick Bolling informing me that a friend in Birmingham had just heard that Sun Ra had died in a local hospital. Sun Ra saw Death as a universal human problem, the ultimate common foe against which earth’s people should rise up united. Certainly, Sun Ra was hip to the way Death, like yeast, has been folded into the doughy mass of this purportedly advanced civilization. Sun Ra’s vibrantly unconventional life combined varying degrees of artist, oracle, minstrel, and sage. He evaded any claim to leadership and instead offered himself as something of a catalyst for a species-wide entry into what he called an alter destiny of renewed creativity and happiness. While he lived and worked among us, Sun Ra’s claims of a globally transformational mission were easily compartmentalized as just the verbal side of a particularly hyperbolic performance shtick. Twenty years after leaving the planet, Sun Ra’s legacy as an extraordinary musician, recording artist, and bandleader continues to grow. Now, just one year before the centenary of his birth, I am seeking your help in publishing a book that will add to our appreciation of the musician who according to poet Amiri Baraka was speaking “of needing another world, needing another mind, needing another human being, and another language.” The Execution of Sun Ra is my attempt to take a second, closer, and perhaps more invested look at the ideas that Sun Ra offered in the midst of his music. In both the archaic military sense and the more contemporary hacker sense, I’m quite convinced that Sun Ra, that whimsical old, folksy musician with the funny clothes and the cosmic rap, was in fact a Trojan horse. Far more than an act of interpretative analysis, my text is a set of fluidly salient opportunities to refocus our freshened attention on Sun Ra and his Myth. It is a set of mining tools and the vaguest trace of a map. Over the course of the next several months, I think it will become clear that Sun Ra was born in the last century to meet the demands of this one. There is a fertile urgency to his talk of what lies beyond our current phase of historical development and I believe that we will, in part through the pages of The Execution, soon have a much better idea of just how much he left us to work with. Thank you, Thomas T. Stanley

Sun Ra - Space Poetry and The Immeasurable Equation

In celebration of the 99th anniversary of Sun Ra's arrival on our Earthly plane.

Sun Ra’s wordplay, poetry, and language equations are as entertaining and thought provoking as his music and all seem to be parts of the same creation/presentation. I don’t think you can fully appreciate Sun Ra's music without also considering this poetry as an element of the grand equation.

With this in mind I would like to share not only the recordings below but what is perhaps my most treasured piece of Sun Ra ephemera, the small self-published volume of The Immeasurable Equation originally sold at Arkestra concerts around 1980.  This particular edition includes 81 poems on as many pages, printed on the rainbow's envy of colored construction paper.

Strange Worlds in My Mind

The Sub Dwellers

The Outer Darkness

The Immeasurable Equation (1980)

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"My Music is Words" - The Poetics of Sun Ra
by Nathaniel Earl Bowles (2008)


In addition, don't miss out on Charles Blass' 6-hour Arrival Day celebration:
OMNIVERSE MYSTERY NINETY-NINE INFINITY

Sun Ra - Life IS Splendid (from Ann Arbor 72 LP)

Life is Splendid

Thanks to Tom in SFCA for suggesting.

"My understanding is that Atlantic Records put out a compilation record of the 1972 Ann Arbor...Festival which contains an excerpt of the Sun Ra Arkestra's performance that was mastered from the original multi-track tapes (not the reference tapes used for the Life is Splendid release). I have been looking for this record but have not yet found it. It would be great if some Saturnian got this record, digitized the Arkestra's cut, and unleashed it on the interwebz. Here's hoping."

d/l wav

2nd Chance: Sun Ra - Live From Soundscape (1979) released 1994

In celebration of Cauleen Smith's amazing work, Black Utopia, I want to re-introduce this fantastic 1979 set performed in NYC.  This is a great recording of a fantastic performance and Disc 2 (Japanese release only) features a full hour-plus-long lecture reminiscent of the stories featured in Smith's audio movie.  In the lecture, Ra delves into double-meanings and word/phonetic equation/dualities with a humor and insight like no other recitation I've heard.  It's a riveting 72 minutes like no other.

Live from Soundscape is a document of a 1979 show at the Soundscape performance space in New York City. June Tyson starts things out singing Astro Black which quickly heads into freakout territory. After the beautiful flute duet, "Where There Is No Sun," we get a couple nice vocal numbers before the classic 70's instrumental pieces, "D27" and "Watusi." The set closes with the ever popular Space Chants "Space is the Place," "We Travel the Spaceways" and "On Jupiter, the Skies Are Always Blue." Sound quality, while good, is not perfect, gearing the release more towards the serious fan. (Initial pressings included a second bonus disc with a fascinating lecture by Sun Ra entitled "The Possibility of Altered Destiny.")
AMG Review by Sean Westergaard 

 
 The Possibility of Altered Destiny

DIW 388 was issued in 1994 as the first disk in a limited-edition two-CD set titled Live at Soundscape.  According to a poster reproduced in the leaflet for the companion disk DIW 388B, there were shows at 3 and 8 pm on November 11; it is not known which one was recorded.  The second CD pressing, which appeared in Japan in 1996, consists of the concert CD without the lecture.

The CD is not a full set of music.  Additional items from this same set (seemingly recorded from a different vantage point and with greater stereo separation -- in fact, Sun Ra's keyboards threaten to take over the whole left channel) were broadcast on WKCR-FM during the April 1987 Sun Ra Festival.  Thanks to Stephen Ramirez for information about the broadcast; it ran 87 minutes.  "Watusi" was placed at the end of the broadcast but was obviously shifted there from its spot before "Space Is the Place," as can be heard on the CD.  "On Jupiter" is faded right after the beginning of the space chant on the CD; on the radio broadcast, it continues with a trumpet duet, a long synthesizer solo in the "dentist drill" manner, a shout of "All out for Jupiter!" and a freakout ensemble, then trails off with vibes and drums.

"Keep Your Sunny Side Up" is a chant by Sun Ra, not the standard.  Personnel identified by Bradford Graves and Verna Gillis by rlc from the tapes; no other documentation of the concert survives.

315. [247} Sun Ra Arkestra

Live from Soundscape

Sun Ra (org, syn, declamation); Michael Ray (tp); Walter Miller (tp); Charles Stephens (tb); Vincent Chancey (Fr hn); Marshall Allen (as, fl, picc, perc); Danny Davis (as, fl, perc); John Gilmore (ts, cl, timb, voc, announcement); Eloe Omoe (bcl, fl, perc); James Jacson (bsn, fl, Inf-d); Danny Ray Thompson (bars, fl, perc); Skeeter McFarland (eg); Damon Choice (vib); Richard "Radu" Williams (b); Luqman Ali (d); Atakatune (cga, perc); June Tyson (voc); Bill Sebastian (light show); unidentified dancers.

Soundscape, NYC, November 11, 1979

info from Campbell / Trent  The Earthly Recordings 2nd ed

Sun Ra & His Arkestra

Live from Soundscape on November 11, 1979

CD 1
Astro Black
Where There Is No Sun [Pleiades]
Living In The Space Age
Keep Your Sunny Side Up
D. 27
Watusi
Space Is The Place
We Travel The Space Ways
On Jupiter, The Skies Are Always Blue

CD 2
SUN RA Talks On "The Possibility of Altered Destiny"
November 10, 1979

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