It’s an inner revelation that has come several times to me, that I have been educated on Sirius, that I come from Sirius
- Karlheinz Stockhausen
In the early 1980s, when I was in the service in Europe, I was into mainstream jazz. Michael Cuscuna had launched the Mosaic label and his whole Blue Note re-issue program was in full swing. I had not yet been introduced to the avant-garde side of jazz. It really wasn’t until I got out of the service that I started to listen to some of the more free jazz music I had been reading about in The Wire and CODA magazines.
When I was transitioning out of the service, they told me that they would send me to one of three places: my home of record – White Bear Lake, Minnesota (I didn’t want to go there); Norfolk, Virginia (I didn’t want to go there); or Oakland, California (That was a no-brainer). A few years earlier I had attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, and I loved the Bay Area. So all my stuff was shipped to Oakland. I rented a small bungalow in Carmel and got a part-time job at an antique store downtown. I took it easy for about 6 months or so until I finally decided that I needed to find a job. So I found a place in Campbell near San Jose and started looking in Silicon Valley.
During that time, I was listening to a Dexter Gordon, Gerry Mulligan Quartet, Frank Morgan, and a lot of the Blue Note and Contemporary re-issues that were coming out. But I was also starting to develop an interest in Anthony Braxton, who at the time was teaching up at Mills College. Through Braxton, I learned about the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Marilyn Crispell, and more about Sun Ra. Then one day I saw that Sun Ra’s Arkestra was coming to San Francisco, and the rest is history….
I had been reading about Sun Ra’s Arkestra for years before I actually had the chance to hear his music. In fact, the first time I heard a Sun Ra song was at the first show I went to at Slim’s in San Francisco on Halloween night in 1988. I bought this T-shirt after the show:
Back in the late-1980s, it was very difficult to find Sun Ra music. Few radio stations played Sun Ra's music because few people had copies of his records. All the Saturn records were pretty much impossible to find. Your best bet would be to catch him at a show, if you were lucky enough to know he was in town, as advertisement was limited to radio stations and city newspapers or fliers from actual gig locations, like this one:
It wasn’t until much later, in 1991, that my buddy Luis and I were able to hear the original Saturn music re-issued on the Evidence label. We bought a set of the first five Saturn CDs as soon as they were released. We’d play them on Friday and Saturday nights at Wessex-Used Books & Records in Menlo Park, where we both worked. It wasn’t until much later, after I moved to Chicago, that I found my first batch of real Saturn records at the Jazz Record Mart. One lazy Saturday morning, I walked in and there they were, just sitting right out in the open in the new arrivals bin. This was probably 1995 or so. To this day, that remains my single biggest record score. In fact, it happened twice - the Jazz Record Mart was very good to me.
Whatever you think of his Astro Black Mythology (you can read more here), Sun Ra’s music is out of this world. He was a trailblazer - an early pioneer of synthesizers and electronic instruments, modal music and free improvisation, and African chants and polyrhythmic sounds. His influence on modern music was broad, reaching from George Clinton’s Funkadelic to Stockhausen and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. He also was an early pioneer of the link between music and mysticism, the spiritual dimension of sound, and the healing power of music, which was picked up on and explored further by John Coltrane and Anthony Braxton, to name just two.
In the late 1980s, Sun Ra’s Arkestra was a powerhouse. However, he was still a pretty unknown element outside his small cult-like following. I think his recordings from that period, which would end up being his last, marked a peak in the band’s creative excellence that rivaled their late 1970s and early 1980s peak that resulted in a handful of great albums: Disco 3000, Sleeping Beauty, Media Dreams, and Omniverse. However, these last recordings seem to have been lost. I rarely hear talk of Sun Ra’s excellent later recordings, beginning with the December 1986 Black Saint recordings of Reflections in Blue and Hours After, released in 1987 and 1989 respectively.
For example, listen to Say It Isn’t So from Reflections in Blue:
These Blank Saint recordings are pretty much a complete swingfest and mark what I think is a distinct move by Sun Ra to embrace his swing roots and move his music to a more broadly accessible place. This is also perhaps why I think they have been forgotten - they are not the much-coveted Saturn releases.
Another reason for their lack of appeal to the Sun Ra faithful and avant-gardists, and perhaps the most important reason of all, is that they were viewed as sellouts.
In a 1971 interview in Jazz Magazine, Sun Ra talks about his association with the Jazz Composers Guild, which he left after a short period. In his words: “People like Shepp and Taylor had their own music, but they were not talking about Space or Intergalatics…They were talking only of Avant Garde or New Thing.” A little later in the article, he went on to say that all of those people from that movement were adamant in their claim that they would never sell out to the majors, but all of them did eventually, except him. Well in 1988, news came out that Sun Ra had signed a contract with A&M Records, founded in 1962 by Herb Albert and Jerry Moss and headquartered on the grounds of the historic Charlie Chaplin Studios near Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The word on the street was that Sun Ra had finally sold out.
In the end, none of that is important to me. I really like Sun Ra’s last recordings, and I want to now shed some light on what I think is the last great twilight of this terrific band.
Thanks in part to an appearance on David Sanborn’s Night Music on December 10th, 1989, Sun Ra’s popularity was rising. I just love this video. It really does give us an insight into a live Sun Ra Arkestra show during this important period for the band.
As you can see in this video, there is undeniably a huge visual aspect to a Sun Ra show. I’ll contend that it is almost as important as the music itself. There is a lot of fun in the ritualistic chanting and dancing to the percussive drones that is lost in recordings of their live shows. The limitations of the recording process thins out the music. Then there is the difficulty of the size of the stage, the venue acoustics, and where to position the mics. All of these challenges diminish the musical experience and render live recordings inconsistent at best.
However, even given the recording limitations of the total Sun Ra experience, I was amazed at how well the A&M albums were recorded. I think these amazingly professional recordings actually are the closest any records came to capturing the sound and feel of a live Sun Ra show. For example, in the first of the two A&M albums, Blue Delight, recorded in December 1988, here is Your Guest is as Good as Mine:
And from the second A&M album, Purple Night, recorded one year later, here is Love in Outer Space.
Both of these songs sound very much to me like this band sounded at their live shows. In fact, after the songs, I expect to hear applause and then remember it’s a studio recording. If these later recordings are a case of Sun Ra selling out, then Bravo! I am glad he did.
Here’s one more for the road. We opened with Sunrise and now we’ll close with Sunset on the River Nile from Sun Ra’s final recording session, Mayan Temples, recorded in Milan in July 1990. It truly was a sunset for Sun Ra, as he passed on to the next world only a few years later in 1993.
Next week, On that Big River called Jazz, we’ll stay with Sun Ra’s last recordings. I think these are some of his more under-valued and under-appreciated recording sessions and deserve wider recognition….
If you like what you’ve been reading and hearing so far on our journey and would like to share this with someone you think might be interested in learning more about our great American art form: Jazz, just hit the “Share” button at the bottom of the page. Also, if you feel so inclined, become a subscriber to my journey by hitting the “Subscribe” button here:
Also, find my playlist on Spotify: From Fred Astaire to Sun Ra.
Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that.
Until then, keep on walking….