SUN RAS OTHER-WORLDLY CAREER DOCUMENTED ON FIVE CDs

CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. -- Evidence Music is readying a highly-anticipated series of five CD packages, including a 2-CD box of unreleased albums, by Sun Ra, the colorful jazz bandleader whose association with interplanetary travel, ancient Egypt, and big band and electronic keyboard innovation made him one of the 20th Centurys most influential and eccentric musical icons. Included in the series are When Angels Speak Of Love by Sun Ra & His Myth Science Arkestra; The Great Lost Sun Ra Albums: Cymbals & Crystal Spears (2 CD set) by Sun Ra & His Arkestra; Pathways To Unknown Worlds/Friendly Love by Sun Ra & His Astro Infinity Arkestra; Greatest Hits: Easy Listening For Intergalactic Travel by Sun Ra & His Arkestra; and Lanquidity by Sun Ra & his Arkestra. Street date for all five CDs is September 26, 2000.

Evidence has been working on the series for four years -- since issuing its award-winning Sun Ra compilation The Singles in 1996. All but Lanquidity emanate from Sun Ras own label, El Saturn Records. All packages contain extensive liner notes, historical documentation and photographs.

Easily one of the oddest personalities in the history of jazz, the bandleader, composer and keyboardist known as Sun Ra claimed to be an extraterrestrial from the planet Saturn. Actually born Herman “Sonny" Blount in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, he studied music at Alabama A&M University and became a big-band leader in his home town. Eventually, he moved to Chicago where he would write arrangements for Fletcher Henderson, change his name to Le Sonyr Ra, and start his first “Arkestra" with saxophonists and band members-for-life John Gilmore, Marshall Allen and Pat Patrick. In the mid and late 50s, he prolifically recorded 45s and LPs for his own Saturn label, even accompanying and writing arrangements for doo-wop groups. His earliest albums were for Transition Records and later Delmark Records in 1957. In 1961, he moved to New York where he continued to record for El Saturn and the indie ESP-Disk label. Sun Ra continued his extensive concert date schedule into the early 90s, and even got as far as signing with A&M Records. He left this planet on May 30, 1993, but his music remains an ongoing source of wonderment and inspiration for all who discover it, as it was for musicians as diverse as George Clinton, Sonic Youth and Phish. Thanks to Evidence Musics reissue program five important new CDs in addition to 16 earlier reissues his most important music continues to become available for future generations.

The five Evidence Music reissues are as follows:

- Sun Ra & His Myth Science Arkestra - When Angels Speak Of Love
This album, originally recorded in 1963 and released in 1966, is the rarest of Sun Ras self-released albums on his own El Saturn label. Only a handful of the original pressing still remain. The album was recorded during Sun Ras New York residency considered by many to be his richest period. This reissue preserves what has been a lost artifact from the “New Thing" revolution in jazz in New York Citys Greenwich Village in the mid-60s.

- Sun Ra & His Arkestra - The Great Lost Sun Ra Albums: Cymbals and Crystal Spears (2 CDs)
This 2-CD box is comprised of two albums originally intended for release on ABCs Impulse Records but never issued. After Impulse abruptly ended a licensing agreement with Sun Ras El Saturn label, the two unreleased album masters were boxed up and returned to Saturn, where they languished in obscurity for the next 27 years. Evidence has remixed the original four-track tapes down to two-track stereo. Former Impulse Records head Ed Michel wrote the notes, which chronicle the short, strange history of Sun Ras major label tenure.

- Sun Ra & His Astro Infinity Arkestra - Pathways To Unknown Worlds / Friendly Love
This package combines two LPs on one CD. Pathways was originally released on vinyl in the mid-70s at the very end of Sun Ras relationship with Impulse and remained in print for less than one year. Evidence has remixed the original four track tapes and has added a track that was intended for the original album but omitted for technical reasons that have now been corrected. Like Cymbals and Crystal Spears, Friendly Love is an early 70s album that is being released for the first time. Sun Ra biographer John Szwed wrote the liner notes, and provides an in-depth glimpse into Sun Ras recording and Evidences mastering techniques.

- Sun Ra & His Arkestra - Greatest Hits: Easy Listening For Intergalactic Travel
Of course Sun Ra never had “hits" per se. But for those wondering where to begin when buying their first Sun Ra album, this is it! Greatest Hits contains tracks from 15 different El Saturn Ra albums, one movie soundtrack and two 45 singles spanning the artists peak period 1956-73. These “easy to listen to" tracks have proven to be among the most popular with Sun Ra fans, and demonstrate Ras evolution and innovations during this period. They were also selected for their musical “accessibility" relatively speaking, of course.

- Sun Ra & His Arkestra - Lanquidity
Lanquidity has become the most valuable of all Sun Ra albums, vinyl copies presently fetching $400 or more despite the fact that it was originally released in 1978. The album was originally on the “micro-label" Philly Jazz, owned by a Philadelphia recording engineer who knew Sun Ra from his live performances on University of Pennsylvanias WXPN. The album has become a much in demand rarity among the ranks of acid jazz DJs throughout the world. Liner notes by Echoes John Diliberto focus on Sun Ras years as a Philadelphia resident. For audiophiles, Evidence has employed the HDCD software and A/D converter to bring this rare recording to compact disc.

Evidence Music co-owner Jerry Gordon is a long-time fan of Sun Ra, having known the artist since the early 70s. “I first heard an album by Sun Ra in a dorm room of a friend at the University of Chicago in the late 60s, and knew immediately that his music was profound and important," he says. “After college, I returned to my hometown of Philadelphia where Sun Ra had moved from New York, and I went to see him perform in the basement of a church on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. The show, complete with dancers and psychedelic light show, was like nothing I had ever experienced. I kept looking around to see if anybody else was actually seeing what I was seeing. And it was the beginning of my lifetime love affair with the music of Sun Ra.

“In 1972, I opened up Third Street Jazz, a retail record store which became a mecca for jazz and R&B enthusiasts. A wall in my store was devoted to the cosmic and often hand-painted jackets of limited pressing Sun Ra recordings that I bought from Ra through his right-hand-man, baritone saxophonist Danny Thompson. For me, it was like retailing the Holy Grail or the Dead Sea Scrolls at $3.99 apiece!

“It is this love for Sun Ras music," Gordon concludes, “that the many liner note writers, designers, photographers, engineers and I have brought to these reissues."