Tag: Sun Ra

Sun Ra and His Arkestra – Some Blues But Not the Kind Thats Blue El Saturn 101477 (1978)

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A collection of mostly standards.  John Gilmore‘s playing on tenor sax is just lovely.  The title track, “My Favorite Things,” “Nature Boy” and “Tenderly” are particularly notable.  If you liked Bad and Beautiful this should also please you.  What happens here, though, is that more Ra-isms are thrown into the mix.  Often that is achieved with jumps between styles.  So, for instance, exotic collective percussion is set starkly against mellow soloing.  The group may only be blowing off steam with these tunes, but this is still eminently pleasant if slightly off-kilter jazz.

Sun Ra – Concert for the Comet Kohoutek XYZ Music ESP 3033-2 (1993)

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Another rather lo-fi live Arkestra recording from the 1970s.  The percussion and the horns en masse sound particularly muddy, which does the music no favors.  You have to be patient with this one, as it starts rather inauspiciously.  The highlights are some smoking solos from Sun Ra on synthesizer, plus some vocals and sax soloing.  The most intriguing moments come mostly in the middle of the album, on “Journey Through the Outer Darkness,” the perennial favorite “Enlightenment,” and “Unknown Kohoutek.”  The vocals really kick in at the tail end of the album too, being the driving force on “Outer Space E.M (Emergency).”  Some very good stuff here for fans, especially those who go for the noisier elements of Sun Ra’s work, though the unconverted will probably want to look elsewhere as, thankfully, you can find even better Arkestra recordings not unlike this fairly easily these days.

Sun Ra – Cosmos Cobra COB 37001 (1976)

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In July of 1976 The Sun Ra Arkestra played the Montreux festival.  Afterward, they lived in Paris for a couple months.  During that time they recorded Cosmos for the obscure French label Cobra.  The album has a laid-back, feel-good vibe.  Yet it is never too easy.  There are still some skronky horn solos, but they blend into mellow electric bass lines and leisurely accompaniment tempos.  John Gilmore lends a really beautiful inside/outside solo on “Jazz From an Unknown Planet” toward the end too.  The album also has that characteristically 1970s warm and round production aesthetic.  The music might be viewed as a synthesis of a lot of typical Arkestra styles, going back to stuff from the 1950s up through the fusion era, blended together as opposed to alternating to and fro.  Nothing here a Sun Ra fanatic hasn’t heard elsewhere, but the overall chilled-out ambiance is quite nice and this sustains itself well from start to finish.  A really nice one — among the more pleasant Arkestra discs of the era.

Sun Ra – The Soul Vibrations of Man El Saturn 771 (1977)

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A live recording from the Jazz Showcase in Chicago in November of 1977.  The first side of the original LP is a lot of odd stuff, meandering around and then ending with a space chant that blends typical Ra afro-futurism with bits of a gospel song (“I Got Shoes” AKA “Walk Over God’s Heaven” etc.).  Side two has some horn charts that actually seem rehearsed or pre-written, in contrast to just about everything to that point, but then concludes with some fiery, shrieking sax playing from one or both of the altoists then Ra on keyboards.   While this has an intimate feel of a casual live show, it is only on side two that it starts to seem really worthwhile.  Not one for Ra newcomers.

Sun Ra and His Myth Science Arkestra – When Sun Comes Out El Saturn LP 2066 (1963)

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Though a bit patchy in places, Calling Planet Earth is an unequaled showcase for the Arkestra’s mighty sax section of John Gilmore, Pat Patrick, Marshall Allen and Danny Davis.  Sun Ra had a harder time recruiting brass players after relocating to New York City.  But the move actually strengthened the sax lineup, as Patrick came back into the fold—he tears up his solo on “Calling Planet Earth.”  [side note: Pat Patrick had relocated to New York ahead of Ra and had left his family behind in Chicago, including his son and future Massachusetts governor Deval]

Sun Ra and His Arkestra – Super-Sonic Jazz El Saturn H7OP0216 (1957)

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This early offering from Sun Ra is more for completists.  That is to say the converted will appreciate this more than the unconverted.  It’s nice enough, if a little rough in the performances and recording fidelity.  There are certainly hints (“India,” “El is a Sound of Joy,” “Medicine for a Nightmare”) of what was to come.  But all we really get are hints, or, at least, undeveloped sketches and first passes.  As a composer, Ra was clearly still developing.  There is more hard bop here than on any other Sun Ra album, and bear in mind that hard bop sort of represented the mainstream in jazz at the time.  But those hints at other things are as weird as anything you could find in the late 1950s — like Ra’s early model electric piano on some of the first few songs.  On the whole, though, the results are not quite as impressive as other Ra recordings from roughly the same era when the Arkestra was based in Chicago. “Kingdom of Not” and “Advice to Medics” are my favorite tracks.

Sun Ra – Oblique Parallax El Saturn IX SR 72881 (1982)

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A very synth-heavy live set recorded in Detroit circa 1980-81.  This is very reminiscent of Disco 3000 and Media Dreams but with more of a focus on Ra.  Compared to similar recordings this is not exactly top-tier stuff, but it’s still full of good vibes (AND crazy synth noise) for the Ra fan.  “Journey Stars Beyond,” which takes up all of side two, is definitely the highlight.

Sun Ra and His Solar-Myth Arkestra – The Solar-Myth Approach (Vol 1) BYG 529.340 (1971)

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Like Space Is the Place and Soundtrack to the Film Space Is the Place, The Solar-Myth Approach (Vol 1) is a very broad and eclectic sampling of various musical forms Sun Ra and his Arkestra had developed up through the early 1970s.  Early on there is a short space chant with “Realm of Lightning” (better known as “Outer Spaceways Incorporated”).  “Seen III, Took 4” is a somewhat rare look back to the abstract experiments of the group’s early days in New York City, something akin to Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy.  “They’ll Come Back” starts with more exotic sounds and a very persistent bowed bass, but eventually transforms into “Ancient Aiethopia,” a song the band had been performing since the 1950s.  The rest is mostly pretty percussion-heavy, with the soloing tending toward the difficult.  The sound here is a bit lo-fi, and the performances may not quite be top-tier, but despite those potential concerns this would still make a fairly good introduction to the work of Sun Ra, especially for more adventurous souls — with the caveat that there are even better recordings out there from the group ready to be heard.

Sun Ra & His Arkestra – Live at Montreux El Saturn MS 87976 (1976)

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A pretty good live set.  This is one of the most high fidelity live recordings of the Arkestra pre-1980, and it features everything from Cecil Taylor-like piano pounding (“Of the Other Tomorrow”) to synthesizer freak-outs (“Gods of the Thunder Realm”) to afro-futurist space chants (“We Travel the Spaceways”) to big band sci-fi exotica (“Lights on a Satellite” and “El Is the Sound of Joy”) to a loose rendition of a standard (“Take the ‘A’ Train”) to plenty of songs with free soloing (“For the Sunrise,” “The House of Eternal Being” and “Prelude”).  It is somewhat interchangeable with a lot of other live Arkestra recordings of the era though.  Personally, because of the slightly showy, programmatic nature of these performances, I prefer the wild yet stately late 60s recording Pictures of Infinity, some of the more intense early 70s live discs like Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, Vol. 1, It’s After the End of the World: Live at the Donaueschingen and Berlin Festivals, the intimate late 70s sets like Disco 3000 and Media Dreams, the lively mid-80s live sets, Live in Nickelsdorf 1984 (and its counterpart Live at Praxis ’84), and even the coarse Egyptian sets like Live in Egypt 1 and the autumnal Live at the Hackney Empire.  If that seems like a lengthy list, then the point is made.  Live at Montreux is not bad at all, but faces stiff competition from so many other Sun Ra live recordings that it doesn’t merit any special attention.

The Sun Ra Arkestra – Live at Praxis ’84 Golden Years GY 5/6 (2000)

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The Arkestra has more polished performances on record, as well as numerous live sets that were recorded better.  Yet this collection of the three original Praxis volumes that documented a show in Greece still offers a uniquely comprehensive view of the basic template for late period Sun Ra.  There were noticeably greater numbers of standards, something likely driven by a number of factors including heightened confidence from recent successes, Sun Ra’s advancing age (he was about to enter his seventies), and even overtures to changing commercial tastes (the Eighties being known for a “conservative” movement in jazz).  The band was frequently recreating Fletcher Henderson recordings like “Yeah, Man!” too.  These were not just performances of Henderson’s signature songs with their original arrangements, but actually live, note-for-note recitations of the old recordings in their entirety.  If you dig this, note that a concert from two weeks later is available on Live in Nickelsdorf 1984 that is at least as good (maybe better).