|
Sun Ra Music CDs
Space Is the Place
(1972) /
Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy/Art Forms of
Dimensions Tomorrow (1992)
Lanquidity (2000) /
Angels & Demons at Play/The Nubians of Plutonia (1956,
1993) /
The Magic City (1965; 1993)
Super
Sonic Jazz (1956; 1992) /
Jazz in Silhouette: Music (1958, 1992) /
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol. 1
(1965, 1999)
/
When Angels Speak of Love
(2000) /
Nuclear War (1982, 2001) /
Visits Planet Earth/Interstellar Low Ways (1956, 1992)
Sunrise in Different Dimensions (1980, 2007) /
Atlantis (1967, 1993)
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* * *
Sun Ra (1914-1993) -- at times seemingly
controversial, weird, unpatriotic -- was a major innovator who
made use of mythology and costumes, looking back on ancient
Egypt and forward with a galactic narrative. He made something
like 125 LPs. He performed everything from 30s hotel-band
schmaltz to synthesizer pieces
1914 (May 22)-- Born
("arrived on the planet") Herman Poole
"Sonny" Blount in Birmingham, Alabama (The Magic City). bout his family we know little. He had an
older brother, Robert, an older half-sister, Mary, and an older
stepbrother, Cary Blount, Jr. Three more stepsiblings resided in
Demopolis,
Alabama. His mother ran restaurants. The Blounts did
not live in either a black neighborhood
or a white neighborhood. Theirs was the only house
on an entire city block. They were located across the street from the Post Office and close to
the main railroad station. There
was a
piano in the house and Sonny was a genuine prodigy.
1932 (January) -- Graduated
from high school. Was already playing piano on a substitute
basis with bands like
the Society Troubadours.
1933 -- Sonny transcribes a
band arrangement Fletcher Henderson's Yeah Manoff a
record for the first time.
1934 -- Sonny led his own band for the first time.
Fall, went on a tour of the Southeast with a band led by Ethel
Harper, a biology teacher who had ambitions to make it as a
singer. She left in
mid-tour with a vocal group, leaving
Sonny in charge. The Sonny Blount Band ranged as far
as Chicago,
where Sonny joined the Musicians' Union local on December 15,
1934.
1935-1936 -- Attended Alabama A&M University in
Huntsville as a music education major. "I think
I studied
everything in that college except farming." Dr. S. F.
Harris paid for scholarships for Sonny and several other
musicians from his high school. Studied Chopin and Rachmaninov. Ended up eighth in his freshman class, with a Grade Point
Average of 3.18. Sonny dreams he traveled with robed figures to
the planet Jupiter.
1936-1946 -- Led the Sonny Blount Orchestra.
1930s -- Moves north, first to Washington and then to
Chicago.
1942 (October) -- Drafted but declares
himself a Conscientious Objector. Spends five weeks in jail
in Jasper, Alabama. Later sent to a Civilian Public Service Camp in
a place called Marienville, in the boondocks of Northwestern
Pennsylvania.
1943 (March) -- Leaves Civilian Public Service camp
on a physical disability discharge, because he had a
hernia.
1946 -- Headed north to Nashville, where for
three or four months he backed R&B singer Wynonie
Harris at
Club Zanzibar. Harris and his combo made four sides for the
local Bullet label.
One of them was Sonny's feature, Dig This
Boogie. Picks up the idea of costuming from
Chicago-based drummer Oliver Bibb who led a society band that
dressed up in Revolutionary War Patriot uniforms.
1946 (August) -1947 (May
18)-- Worked with Fletch Henderson and his band, South Side
Chicago at Club DeLisa. Sonny replacing Henderson on the piano. The
club featured all of
the top entertainers in Chicago: singer Lurleen Hunter, blues vocalist
Little Miss Cornshucks,
impressionist George Kirby, and another singer named Jo Jo
Adams, who was
renowned for his wardrobe of outrageously colored tuxedos. There were tap dancers
like the
Four Step Brothers and Cozy Cole's Drum Dancers. Picked up many of his ideas about
entertainment.
Fall of 1947 -- Was
music director of a successful medium-sized band.
1948 (November) -- Recorded
with Eugene Wright's Duke of Swing, Yusef Lateef on sax. Arranged
the Dukes' entire book.
1948 (December) --During
this period Sonny also played for a month at the North Side of
town
with Coleman Hawkins and Stuff Smith.
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Mid-1949 -- Sonny
and Tommy Hunter began playing in trios in Calumet City,
a Chicago suburb mainly known for its strip joints. On
his very first tape machine, a Sound Mirror, Sonny
recorded Stuff and himself playing the Solovox, a
primitive electronic instrument in his tiny apartment.
Early 1950s --
Worked at the Birdland and Robert's Lounge Club in
Chicago, playing for Red Saunders, Red Holloway, Sonny
Stitt and accompanying B.B. King on a tour through the
States. During this
period Sonny became "busy
with spirit things . . .I wasn't even really here."
His concerns about racism and man's inhumanity together
with his extensive readings from books about the occult
the hidden meanings found in the Bible and
anthropological speculations on Egypt as the source of
all civilization. Sonny discovered we are all
"children of the sun." |
 |
Sonny associated with a loose
secret society on the South Side of Chicago,. an unusual
variety of Black Nationalism, admonishing Black men to
recognize the importance of outer space. Alton Abraham, the Arkestra's manager and head of Sun Ra's record label, was
affiliated with this group, as were Lawrence Allen, T. S. Mims, Sr., and others who would
later provide financial backing for recordings. Abraham and his
friends may have been local gangsters.
.
1951 -- Sonny formed
the Space Trio to play his far-out music: one charter member was
Pat
Patrick (1929-1991), who played alto and baritone sax. The drum chair
was occupied on
some occasions by Tommy Hunter.
1952 -- Sonny
proclaimed he was a citizen of Saturn, not of Planet Earth; that
he was not human,
but rather of an angel race; that he was to
serve as the Cosmic Communicator, bringing the
Creator's message
to benighted Earthlings.
1952 (October 20) --
Sonny officially changed his name to Le Sony'r Ra -- Ra
after the Egyptian
sun god. Sun Ra (sometimes Le Sun Ra) was technically his
stage name.
1953 -- Sun Ra leads a trio
with Richard Evans and Robert Barry. John Gilmore and Charles
Davis
joined the band.
1954 -- Birth of
Arkestra (renames his band, a respelling that happens to include
"Ra" both forwards and
backwards)., after Marshall Allen, Pat Patrick, Art Hoyle,
Julian Priester, and James Scale
join up with Sonny's band. They called themselves alternately
the Mythscience or Solar Arkestra.
John Gilmore (born 1931 in Summit, Mississippi, but
raised in Chicago) had attended
DuSable High School with its fabled band program. After getting out of
the Air Force in
1953, he worked with Earl Hines and quickly became regarded as one of the up and
coming young musicians in Chicago.
1954 -1958 -- Sun Ra wrote songs in four-part harmony
-- Black Sky and Blue Moon, Take the
Outer Drive to
the South Side. Many of these are lost, but not all.
Early 1956 -- Wilburn Green
was playing what Sunny quaintly called the "electronic
bass" and
Gilmore's old Air Force buddy Art Hoyle had become the Arkestra's main
trumpeter. Some
money must have been available, because time was booked at RCA Studios.
1956 (Jul 12) -- Arkestra records first album Jazz by Sun
Ra -- Sun Song, for Transition
1957 -- Arkestra records an
album for Delmark. The first Arkestra was a hard-bop band.
It was
modal hard-bop, polytonal hard-bop, polyrhythmic hard-bop. Sunny wrote
a new tune in
honor of his "home planet" -- Saturn; it became
the band's theme song Sun Ra begins using
an electric piano.
1957 -- Supersonic Jazz
released.
 |
1958 -- Jazz in
Silhouette released.
1959 -- Sun Ra composed the score of a
documentary, The Crya of Jazz."
1961 -- Arkestra left Chicago for a concert in
Montreal and in a town in the mountains of Quebec.
1961 -- Arkestra
moves to New York. Between 1961-1965 Arkestra records
ten albums for their Saturn label. |
1963 -- Sun Ra uses the clavoline.
1965 -- Arkestra makes first recording for
ESP DISK,
titled Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol.1, followed by Vol. 2
on November 16, 1965.
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1966 (May) --
Records one album (last for ESP) with Pharaoh Sanders,
who replaced John Gilmore, title Nothing Is.
1960s -- Sun Ra developed style for ensemble
play; produced a distinctive environment of music and
dress.
Late 60s -- Sun Ra records first solo album
Monorails and Satellites.
1966-1972 -- Regular gig at Slug's Saloon in
the Lower East Side in New York, few blocks from Sun
Ra's home. |
 |
1968 -- El Is a Sound of Joy ,one of Sunny's
best compositions (ca. 1956), released by Delmark
1969 -- Sun Ra uses the Moog synthesizer, plays
celesta, organ, rocksichord, harpsichord, and piano
1970 -- Sun Ra begins
sing or preach to the audience. Arkestra plays at Berlin Jazz
Festival. Misunderstood by Germans -- the dancing, lighting, walking and
playing. An album of
performance made by Germans.
 |
1970 -- Arkestra's The
Solar Myth Approach, Vols. 1 and 2 released by
BYG-Actuel. Relocated his group to Philadelphia
1971 -- Arkestra plays in front of pyramids in
Egypt.
1972 -- Arkestra tours and records all through
the States and returns to Chicago. Plays the Ann Arbor
Festival.
1978 -- Sun Ra makes a duo album with Walt
Dickerson.
1993 (Memorial Day) -- Sun Ra returns to home planet, Saturn |
DVD Performances
Space Is The Place (, 1974, 2003) /
Live
in Oakland (2006) /
The Magic Sun
(2005) /
A Joyful Noise
(1980, 1999)
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update 6 July 2008 |
