By Robert Spencer
Sun Ra was born on the planet Saturn some time ago. The best accounts
agree that he emerged on Earth as Herman "Sunny" Blount, born in
Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, although Sun Ra himself always denied that
Blount was his surname. He returned to Saturn in 1993 after creating a
stunningly variegated and beautiful assemblage of earthly and
interplanetary music, most notably with his fervently loyal Arkestra.
(Many great musicians passed through the Arkestra over the years, including
reedman Pharoah Sanders, trombonist Julian Priester, and violinist Billy
Bang. Most notable and long-tenured were the criminally underrated John
Gilmore on tenor sax and Marshall Allen on alto). Mr. Blount, or Mr. Ra, or
Mr. Mystery (as he was sometimes styled in later years) first appeared on
the scene as a pianist with Fletcher Henderson's band, and to the end of
his life Ra retained an affinity, respect, and genius for big band music in
the style of Henderson and his contemporaries, with Sun's own
extra-galactic twists. Some of his brilliant output in this vein has now
become widely available for the first time from Evidence records. At the
same time he furiously and indignantly claimed to have originated the Free
Jazz that was made popular - or at least famous - by others in the Sixties,
and the recorded evidence shows that he has a case. By the Eighties he was
playing vintage Fletcher Henderson and Coleman Hawkins stomps alongside his
own hyper-avant extraterrestrial creations, vividly illustrating the
collective improvisation link between "Dixieland" and "Free jazz" so often
claimed by free players (notably Ornette Coleman).
Out of disgust for the commercial scene Sun Ra also created his own
record company, Saturn, through which he released a series of all-time
masterpieces which were harder to find in his own day than they are now.
Saturn releases were hard-to-find (unless one had the luck to attend a Sun
Ra concert, where they were available at intermissions), but the Evidence
reissues of many of the best of them are in every record store worthy of
the name. Supersonic Jazz, Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth,
Jazz in Silhouette, and Interstellar Low Ways are just a few
of the high-water marks of jazz that Ra created. No one who is serious
about finding good music should miss them. Oddly enough (if anything can be
odd in the career of a space-alien bandleader), he also released a series
of singles ranging stylistically from straight doo-wop to relentless
stardust (not the Hoagy Carmichael kind). Later releases do not display the
tightness and cohesion of the Evidence reissues, but the later Arkestras
captured on Black Saint and Leo are capable of fury, tenderness, and
persistent virtuosity.
Because he insisted that he was a Saturnian, and developed an elaborate
cosmology and myth-system with considerable spiritual and political
implications, Sun Ra was often dismissed as a clown. For some listeners it
was enough to see him decked out in his extraterrestrial regalia to call
him a con man and move on. Even the most cursory hearing of the music
demonstrates that such dismissals were and are patently unfair. Behind Ra's
mythology were a good number of sound and sensible ideas; more importantly,
he was a master musician who left a magnificent body of work. His influence
as an arranger and a leader cannot be underestimated, and is ignored by
musicians only at their peril.
Fans of "straight-ahead" jazz should sample Sun Ra's Evidence reissues.
Freer aficionados should give the Black Saints and Leos a listen. Both
groups will be surprised, even stunned. But if they have ears, they will in
no way be disappointed.
