Sun Ra

Love in outer space....

And yet, who knows very much of what jazz is really about? Or how shall we ever know until we are willing to confront anything and everything which it sweeps across our path?

- Ralph Ellison

They teach you there’s a boundary line in music. But man, there’s no boundary line to art.

- Charlie Parker

After serving in The Netherlands and Germany, I arrived back in California in the spring of 1987. I rented a small duplex in Carmel on Torres Street off Ocean Avenue, got a part-time job at an antique store, and settled back into life in the States. Before long, I had taken a volunteer position as a DJ at KAZU in Pacific Grove, where I met a great group of other DJs, who liked jazz but were mostly gospel and blues fans. We kept each other informed of all the bands coming to town, as this was pre-Internet and most of the shows were passed on by word of mouth. They also knew where to find the best used records in the Bay Area. During those days, I mostly hung out in Camel Valley and the Monterey Bay area, where the Jazz scene was limited. It wasn’t until I decided to find a full-time job in Silicon Valley in 1988, that my jazz journey hit full stride.

I found a job and rented a room in a guy’s house in Campbell, an ideal location for trips to Santa Cruz and the Bay Area. The jazz scene was vibrant. This was when Frank Morgan was making his comeback and Cedar Walton’s trio backed him a lot. Sonny Rollins, Lester Bowie, Dizzy Gillespie, Les McCann, & Eddie Harris, and all the big names made West Coast stops. Then Sun Ra and his Arkestra came to town. At that time, I knew very little about Sun Ra.

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The first time I remember seeing Sun Ra’s name in print was in The Wire magazine in April 1986. In his Soundcheck section, Andy Gill wrote a review of Sun Ra’s 1985 Children Of The Sun and Hiroshima records. As I re-read it now, I realize he was not all that kind:

Quality control, it’s safe to say, was never one of Ra’s strong suits. Where a Dolphy or an Ayler did little, but significantly little, the Fat Man from Saturn has meandered unchecked through his own personal musical cosmos, giving listeners as little guidance as he can get away with, while himself getting away with releasing some pretty ropey rubbish.

He would later write:

Since then (1980), he’s put out a further 15 albums, not one of which, I’m afraid comes close to classic status. Some, like the three volumes of Live at Praxis ‘84, are simply unedited live performances, while others are rag-bags of out-takes and historical fragments of dubious heritage.

As a result, I was not in a hurry to dig my paddle into Sun Ra, but the review did intrigue me. However, in 1989, while I was following Marilyn Crispell's career, I ran into Graham Lock’s book Forces in Motion, released in March 1989.

Forces in Motion is a deep dive into Anthony Braxton and his quartet’s twelve-date England tour in the winter of 1985; however, Lock offers much more than that. His excellent analysis of the music of Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman and the Art Ensemble of Chicago drew me into listening to the music of the AACM. But the biggest offering was his analysis of Sun Ra and his music. The first chapter in the book is called Astro Black Mythology.

At the end of that chapter Lock wrote:

There are people who decry Sun Ra’s work as escapist or opportunist. Even within the Black community he has his detractors: Betty Carter, for instance, has said, ‘It’s nothing but bullshit. Sun Ra has got whitey going for it.’ If spending three decades in relative poverty is opportunist, then Sun Ra is guilty. It’s true too that his concerts are spectacular, entertaining, and often funny, but I think it’s clear that essentially Sun Ra is both serious and magical - perhaps, serious because he is magical. As Julio Finn points out: ‘The fact is that far from being a substitute for it, magic was a form of blacks’ political agitation; the fact is that the Afro-American has never accepted the status quo.’ And Amiri Baraka, writing as LeRoi Jones in 1966, declared, ‘Sun Ra speaks of evolution of the cosmic consciousness, that is future or as old as purusa.’ So Mister Ra is not a freak, a con-man, a madman, or even a singular genius: genius he may be….

It was that chapter that put me in Sun Ra’s gravitational pull. After reading Forces In Motion, I was on the lookout for Sun Ra and his Arkestra.

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Back in the late-1980s, it was very difficult to hear any Sun Ra music. No radio stations played his music because few people had copies of his records. All of Sun Ra’s 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, city newspapers, or fliers from actual gigs. So when I saw that he was playing in San Francisco, I went to see what he was all about.

The first time I heard a Sun Ra song was the first time I saw him - on Halloween night in 1988:

After that show, I had become a disciple - knocked out by the big band sound of the Arkestra. Besides Sun Ra, I was captured by the presence of June Tyson and John Gilmore, who seemed like angels on the stage.

There’s a three-dimensionality to Sun Ra’s Arkestra that, like Willem Breuker’s Kollektief, can’t be conveyed through listening to their LPs or even watching videos of their concerts. This was beautiful music with an edge and some noise. It is simply something that must be seen live to fully comprehend. In the end, since the first time I saw Sun Ra and his Arkestra on Halloween in California, I have found his life and music…magical.

I would go on to see him a few more times in 1989: again at Slim’s, Koncept’s Cultural Gallery in Oakland, and The Catalyst in Santa Cruz. Then again in early 1990 at another show at Koncept’s Cultural Gallery, where I bought this copy of The Immeasurable Equation from John Gilmore.

It’s difficult to explain how Sun Ra’s Arkestra sounded in 1989 and 1990, but it was a well-oiled machine. They were heavy into traditional Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington numbers but also mixed in Sun Ra originals that often featured African and Egyptian-influenced trance songs, with June Tyson and Wisteria El Moondew (Judith Holton) floating around the stage. I found the music mesmerizing. It harkened me back to Weather Report’s Badia.

I’ve tried to find a few recordings that best reflect how Sun Ra’s Arkestra sounded when I saw them, beginning with the African-influenced Friendly Galaxy from his 1990 Purple Night:

At the time, Sun Ra was playing mostly piano and Marshall Allen would play wonderful meandering solos, as you hear on Sunrise from his 1989 Blue Delight is another favorite:

From the first time I saw June Tyson and heard her sing, I fell secretly in love. I can still remember the first I heard her sing Sunset On The River Nile, one of my favorite Sun Ra songs:

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The first Sun Ra album I ever saw I bought. It was Out There A Minute, released by Blast First in 1989:

I can’t recall where I bought it, probably at the Tower Records in San Francisco. That record was the start of my Sun Ra collection and it remained my only document of Sun Ra’s music until 1991, when my friend Luis and I were able to hear Sun Ra’s early Saturn music for the first time, re-issued on the Evidence label. I can’t remember how I learned about this epic Sun Ra’s Saturn CD release project. I probably read about it in The Wire magazine, but that was a breakthrough.

Luis and I split the costs of the first five CDs. I bought Jazz in Silhouette, Super-Sonic Jazz, and Sound Sun Pleasure, and Luis bought Holiday for a Soul Dance and Monorails and Satellites. This way we would have all five Saturn releases available to play at Wessex Books store in Menlo Park, California, where we worked the night shift on Friday and Saturday.

Up until that point, I had only read about Sun Ra’s Saturn albums. I had never even seen one in print. So putting the first CD in the Wessex CD player was a voyage of discovery. I can’t remember which one we played first, but it was probably Jazz in Silhouette. It was fun to watch the reaction of people in the bookstore as we spun those Saturn CDs.

Luis and I went to all the used record stores in the Bay Area and Santa Cruz looking for Sun Ra albums. We always came up empty. However, on one of our last trips to Amoeba Music in Berkeley, before I moved to Chicago, we ran across some Saturn records in generic white album covers. I have no idea how they got there. There were only three releases, but about 25 of each one. I bought a copy of each one. Those three were my first Saturn records. Here they are:

A few months later, by the time I had moved to Chicago in 1992, I was already a committed Sun Ra fan in pursuit of his music.

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I knew Sun Ra’s Arkestra grew out of Chicago, but I did not really expect to find any of his records there. But fate smiled at me - or I should say, fate was in a pleasant mood. One Saturday morning, a miracle happened. At the Jazz Record Mart, I found a stash of five Sun Ra albums in the new arrivals bin. Here are three of the five:

Sleeping Beauty, with the title track typed as Black Beauty:

Over The Rainbow, with Sun Ra’s cover art design:

And finally, Media Dreams, which might be the original sample label art design:

Interestingly, from time to time, on early Saturday mornings, I would find more Saturn albums in the new arrivals bin.

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Unfortunately, Sun Ra suffered a stroke in November 1990, and I never got to see him perform again. I did get to see the Arkestra with John Gilmore as the leader one last time in February of 1991 at a benefit at Koncept’s in Oakland. Then in October 1992, he suffered a second stroke and left this plant on May 30, 1993. He was 79 earth years old. Thankfully, Marshall Allen has kept the Arkestra alive and well.

Here’s one more for the road. From Somewhere Else, I’ve always liked this rocker, Everything in Space:

Over the past few weeks, we have explored my jazz journey. It was a strange journey, starting with Fred Astaire in the 1970s and then moving to the Blues-Jazz fusion of John Mayall and the Rock-Jazz fusion of Santana that ultimately, two decades later, led me all the way to Sun Ra. Along the way, there were many side trips on rivers less traveled, but I was always searching for the heart of America’s greatest art form: Jazz.

Next week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in to explore the waters of the music I heard during last month’s trip to Italy and Spain.

Please hit this link to buy me a cup of coffee, if you’d like to show your guide some appreciation for this and past journeys. Know in advance that I thank you for your kindness and support.

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Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that.

Until then, keep on walking….