Sun Ra Music

I've heard a few Sun Ra songs from free downloads and You Tube viewings, and the songs and Sun Ra's reputation are intriguing. I figured I dip my toe into the Sun Ra water with the aptly titled "Greatest Hits: Easy Listening for Intergalactic Travel." It takes you from 1956 to 1973, and gives you a sense of which Sun Ra era might be best for you. The early Sun Ra is fairly straight jazz. "Saturn" is a very catchy song, and the only unusual thing about it is the electric bass. Then, you get into the straight jazz with odd chants, like on "Rocket Number Nine". These are charming songs, they seem kitschy like gigantic tail fins on cars. In the mid '60's the music gets stranger still, and as a rule I like the songs less as the CD goes on. However, Sun Ra is experimenting, and if you don't get anything wrong you're not trying anything new. The odd sensibilities of Sun Ra are perhaps best shown by the last song, "The Perfect Man", which was originally a single. It's Sun Ra funk, though the drum beat is unlike anything a Headhunter would think to play. I think most jazz fans would like this CD, dedicated free jazzers would love it - if you don't have any Sun Ra CD's this is a good place to start.

I bought this CD after watching several videos of Sun Ra that were made later in his career, including Space is the Place, an appearance on Night Music the TV show, and a docementary. I saw him live once at a festival and was charmed and intrigued, I like his nature-humanity-alter destiny message, and the music I enjoy a lot, too. I like the chants, the standard jazz, not so much the squeaking, but it grows on you. The biography book Space is the Pace is also very interesting. The music on this CD is varied, charming, listenable. I hope to get some more of his CDs. This is somewhat earlier in his career, I think, but it has been a good introduction, it has a lot of levels that reveal themselves with more listening. I recommend it.

First off, i must state that I LOVE Sun Ra, and own 25 or more of his reissued CDs. (I named my cat after him, too.)

Second, I *applaud* Evidence records for all their many great reissues of Sun Ra, and for even attempting to do a "Greatest Hits" CD retrospective. In some ways they succeed: they've compiled in one CD one track from almost each full length CD they've reissued. And you really can hear a WIDE variety of the many sounds & styles by Sun Ra & his Arkestra.

However, eh. The success of pulling a track from so many styles and eras ends up sounding too disjointed (if that is possible for Sun Ra). Evidence does a fine job reissuing often two original Saturn recordings on one CD, and they pay attention to the moods of each album and always pair them with like moods. I don't want to discourage anyone from buying this if it is the only way they'll discover Sun Ra. I guess i just want to say that a better way to discover his music would be to listen to several albums in their entirity (go to the library and check them out for free if you don't want to invest $ yet.) Best ones to try first :

"Angels & Demons At Play/Nubians of Plutonia" - A good beginner's CD. more straightforward but not straight. For those who either love jazz already or are indie pop/post-rock fans wanting to dip into Sun Ra.

"Super-Sonic Jazz" - also a great beginner's CD, (not too wildly chaotic but early in Ra's career. Still contains brilliant pieces which aren't 'straight.'

"Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth / Interstellar Low Ways" - another good start, but if you have and enjoy the above, why not try something a bit more out there, like the following...

"Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy/Art Forms for Dimensions Tomorrow" - WONDERFUL abstract work, each piece has its own feel and mood. My first and favorite Ra.

"Heliocentric Worlds v1" - another masterpiece, more percussion oriented.

"The Magic City" - the song 'the magic city' is a 27min masterpiece. part of me wants to mention Miles Davis 'bitches brew', but i know Ra fans would give me hell for that so i suppose i won't.

"The Singles" (2CD) - many excellent moments. This is the CD (2CD) for those who must have a retrospective spanning his entire career.

"Soundtrack to Space is the Place" - lots of fun vocal songs here. 70's and proud. the film is a blaxploitation classic!

I bought this "Greatest Hits" to give to my father for a first go at Sun Ra, but ended up deciding to give him "Angel/Nubians" instead, which he ended up prefering. If you really want to start with a retrospective and hear samples of all eras of Sun Ra, try the 2CD "Singles" instead.

This is as good an introduction to Sun Ra's music as one could possibly wish for. The collection has many things going for it: a very generous selection (18 tracks, 78 minutes - it justifies the disc's steep price) organized chronologically, which amply showcases the evolution of the Arkestra's work; Evidence has culled the 18 tracks from 18 of their Sun Ra reissues, so if the listener has some favorites (s)he can then easily find the album they originated from. Among the highlights, I'd personally mention the jaunty 'Kingdom of Not', perhaps the collection's most accessible instrumental piece; the strange, fascinating and unique 'Rocket #9', whose successive episodes both contrast and complement each other; the moving piano solo 'The Alter Destiny', full of delicate melodic touches by Sun Ra; the spare and percussive 'Yucatan'. The Arkestra's listeners will not merely hear a band play music, but literally live it; music here becomes a ladder towards the transcendent.

Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods; Germantown is one of the more celebrated ones. Known for its cobblestone streets and historic buildings, Germantown has grown tough and dangerous over time. Our Bicentennial year found me driving a cab there twelve hours a day, six days a week, a rugged job with few perks. One of the best was the opportunity to catch a glimpse of Sun Ra and members of his Arkestra having a bite to eat at the local McDonald's. If this idea is not improbable enough, bear in mind that he was invariably dressed in full Saturnalian regalia.

Sun Ra looked then, as he always did, like a visitor from outer space, quite happily out of context, oblivious to acceptance or the lack of it. This, I think, is ultimately the force of Sun Ra. However much critics desire to dismiss him as a quack, charlatan, or vaudevillian, he himself was utterly sincere. When you buy CDs by almost all musicians, you buy entertainment - predictable entertainment. When you buy a Sun Ra CD, you are purchasing a key to an alternate dimension.

While Sun Ra recorded almost obsessively, he certainly didn't have "hits," unless there's a radio station on Saturn, in which case everything he did is a hit. Most of his records were self-produced and it's a minor miracle that we have them at all. I prefer the subtitle of this CD, Easy Listening For Intergalactic Travel. For novices and devotees alike, this CD offers a very agreeable trip into the world of Sun Ra, from swing and bop into the celebrated interstellar travelogue material for which Sun Ra is best known. It is a particularly good CD for neophytes, because it won't scare them away. There is enough that is familiar to help listeners understand that Sun Ra knew his musical roots cold, and that every note he played, however unexpected, he played on purpose. By the time you hit The Order Of The Pharaonic Jesters you are deep in Sun Ra country, reclining in Rocket Number Nine, libation of choice in your hand, gazing at Jupiter through the portal. Highly recommended.

This version (with the split cover) used an inferior source and switched the channels, the new ESP version with the black cover is from the master tape and has infinitely better sound!

The first two volumes of Sun Ra's "Heliocentric Worlds" recordings (both originally released in 1956) have been combined into several different editions on CD. This latest package from ESP-Disk has apparently reached a pinnacle in sound quality, while the CD booklet forwards the work of biographers who seem to have organized the chaotic snippets of information (and, legend has it, deliberate misinformation) about Sun Ra's recording sessions. Only true collectors and experts will argue over whether this particular CD edition is better or worse than any of the others. But in any case, serious music enthusiasts, who are interested in the history of jazz, and the explorations of its far outer reaches, will be hard pressed to find a more astounding and mindboggling piece of work than the Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra.

The enigmatic Saturnian big band leader seems to have based his work during this period on hard bop, though he and his band took the music to distant interstellar regions that it had never been to before, or since. The Heliocentric sessions consist primarily of exploratory and heavily eccentric solos by Sun Ra's crack troupe of jazz astronauts. The woodwinds and percussion of Marshall Allen are especially ear-catching, as are Sun Ra's mystical meanderings on exotic instruments like marimba and celesta. The first seven tracks here, comprising Heliocentric Worlds Vol. 1, are comparatively dark and subdued, with all of the expert musicians laying down introspective solos, and coming together occasionally for skronky freakouts like the one that concludes "Other Worlds" One such jam in "Dancing in the Sun" is topped off by a brainmelting sax solo from Danny Davis. The sessions for Vol. 2, represented here by tracks 8-10, are much freakier, and the centerpiece of the project, if not the whole multi-decade multi-galactic Sun Ra experience, has got to be "The Sun Myth," which is overflowing with bizarre sonic explorations that are decades ahead of their time and light years from home. It's hard to get a handle on what Sun Ra was doing during his innovative and cutting-edge career, and he and his gang of outer space virtuosos surely reached one of their many peaks with Heliocentric Worlds. [~doomsdayer520~]

During the time when Sun Ra was recording his most creative music, only three disks were being distributed, and you were pretty lucky to find any of them at even the most exotic record shop. The label was ESP, which distributed his two Heliocentric Worlds sessions (along with the live Nothing Is). Considering how much his reputation rode on these titles, it is more than fortunate how well they represented the mystery and adventure of the mid-60's arkestra. Even as many dozens of other recordings eventually found their way onto CD's, Heliocentric Worlds remains part of his core catalogue.

Now ESP has released some extra material from the second Heliocentric session, nearly four decades after the fact. Scraps that were pruned from stronger material? There are a couple of short link tracks where this seems the case, but much of this recently excavated stuff is arguably on par with the original, only more energetic with stronger ensemble interaction. That's certainly true of the seventeen minutes of intercosmosis, that sounds much more like Magic City than the dreamy Heliocentric II. Ra sticks to piano here and fights it out with Gilmore, Patrick, Allen and Boykins, all of whom are on top of their game. world worlds sounds very much like the kind of red meat power charting that Ra would occaissionally toss into his live shows as a change of pace. interplanetary travelers is a wonderful music box of a piece that weaves both dreamy and energetic into a quick rondo.

hard to really put this stuff into perspective after one spin. i think the long piece may be great. certainly any '65 Ra deserves careful study. felicitations to the Good Doctor.

Yet another collection of Sun Ra material that has an uncertain recording date, though it seems as if the material was recorded in the late-1960s.

The eight numbers chronicle a retrospective journey by Sun Ra, back to the 1940s in Chicago when he was a young pianist. I Loves You, Porgy, Keep Your Sunny Side Up, Day by Day and Body and Soul are excellent strides back to a time when Sun Ra was learning valuable lessons in his quest to become a jazz artist.

This album of standards is delightful. It is only 32 minutes long and contains one vocal track (#5) that I don't particularly care for, yet I have give it the coveted five stars that I don't hand out very often. Why?

The other seven tracks are just wonderful upbeat music with that indefinable Sun Ra twist and superb arrangements. You listen to this, you feel happy, you spend the rest of the day with a song in your heart. As simple as that. A classic album--they just don't make 'em like this any more.

My star rating system goes like this:

5 stars--an absolute classic
4 stars--the artist is on top form here, a good buy
3 stars--fans of this artist should enjoy this album
2 stars--some good stuff, but inconsistent
1 star--just not good enough

Not all that much music on here, but what is here is beautifully arranged and played, and Evidence did a great job on the mastering. It's a good Ra session where he arranges other people's compositions. I brought this out of mothballs yesterday, and quite enjoyed it.

This is a beautiful album by Sun Ra. It is very easy to listen to with the jazz standard tunes. I have seen Sun Ra and the Arkestra 6-8 times over the years and very much like their take on jazz standards. A number of the albums are not for "kids" in that they are very much on the outside, so proceed cautiously so as not to get scared away, and allow yourself to grow with the music.

To the person who says, "not enough music", GET REAL.
It's never enough and should leave you wanting MORE.
This was an GREAT re-release.
If you do or don't know of this gentlemans greatness, you can't miss with this one.
My 5 and 3 year old love it too.

sun ra made a name for himself through his eccentric stage persona as a native of saturn bringing the hip sounds of space to our earthly ball. early on (1950s), it was unique spins on standards and hard bop, then in the 1960s it was experimental free jazz ('space is the place' is a good example), then in the 1970s, sun ra put together a big band that both swung and pushed the wall of sound further out. this album has both, but the mix seems schizophrenic, rather than melded. the first three tracks sound like a 1940s jump band, with decent solos and some nice band work, but those seeking sun ra's cutting edge sound will be disappointed. good though they are, the songs leave the listener with a "ho-hum, next time i'll try a duke ellington or count basie record" feeling. but the final two tracks, "dance of the extra terrestrians" and "love on a far away planet" deliver the goods sun ra is known for. these songs create atmospheres with sound, the solos sharp and challenging. the first is a burn-out, dipping and darting every which way, then settling into a stark piano-bass-sax trio before launching off in another group explosion. the second sets a groove over which the soloists push the form and create sonic drawings over the grounding riff. the song ends with another argument against fade-outs on jazz records-- you're just getting immersed when the volume drops to silence and the album's over! same goes for the opening track... oh, well. not sun ra's greatest album, but still worth having, even for someone new to the artist.