Sure, the Sun Ra Arkestra, led by 98-year-old Marshall Allen is still performing and recording but recordings from the originator, the iconic visionary Sun Ra, are also growing in volume in recent years. Heck, the artist has one of the most extensive discographies in history with over more than 100 albums (live and studio) and over 1000 songs. So, we can expect to hear even more from the iconic legend. Nonetheless, this, Craft’s reissued, remastered version of Sun Ra’s first recording with the Arkestra in 1962, Savoy’s The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra may be among the most important as it is a bridge of sorts from composing music to a more improvised, spontaneous, and organic sound that moved well beyond jazz, into Afrofuturism. It has long been regarded as one of the icon’s most accessible albums. The album marked Ra’s move from Chicago to New York, which proved to be the initial launching pad for cosmic music, Space Age costumes, and uncategorizable music that spanned true jazz but was more often “somewhere else.”
Tom Wilson (Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, and The Mothers of Invention) produced The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra now available in digital, LP, and CD formats with packages that include Wilson’s original liner notes, plus insightful new essays by jazz historian Ben Young, as well as by Irwin Chusid, who not only administers the musical estate for Sun Ra, but is also a journalist, radio personality, and the author of the forthcoming book, Sun Ra: Art on Saturn — The Album Cover Art of Sun Ra’s Saturn Label. Engineered by Paul Cady, the sessions featured nine players, including Ra on piano, Bernard McKinney (later known as Kiane Zawadi, on trombone and euphonium), Marshall Allen (alto sax, flute, among other reed instruments), John Gilmore (tenor sax, bass clarinet), Pat Patrick (bass saxophone), Ronnie Boykins (bass), Willie Jones (drums), Leah Ananda (conga), and Ricky Murray (vocals). The album was recorded in just one day.
Of this lineup, Gilmore is a legend on the tenor and the inimitable, venerable Allen is currently the bandleader of a unit that generally numbers upwards of 23 members. At the time though, this was a large unit as described by Chusid, “the octet-plus-vocalist format mirrored what Ra had often presented in Chicago. They employed an arsenal of percussion, including bells from India, Chinese wind chimes, wood blocks, maracas, claves, scratchers, gongs, cowbells, Turkish cymbals, and castanets.” – much of what we still see today in their shows. This recording, though is in one sense just a sampling of what the band could play with no extensive tracks, instead running from around two- six and half minutes. As Sun Ra was getting established in NYC, he would drop copies around to demonstrate the breadth of what the band could play.
The program begins with the Latin-influenced, “Bassism,” where the bass clarinet, bass (like baritone) saxophone, and Marshall’s flute are prominent over Sun Ra’s piano chords with the trombone moving to the forefront in the latter half. The bluesy, trombone-infused “Of Sounds and Something Else” follows, featuring Allen’s alto solo, and a swinging piano turn from the leader. and brassy ensemble work. Following these straight-ahead pieces, the aptly named, “What’s That?” begins to venture into the avant-garde with jagged lines from a four-saxophone improvisation, and percussive piano from the leader. “The Beginning,” the six-and-a-half-minute piece, features a combination of swing and free-flowing passages from the horns as well as an array of percussion and strident “out there” playing from the reeds
Sun Ra composed ten of the eleven tunes with Victor Young’s “China Gates” the lone exception, effectively transporting us to the Orient with the gongs and the only one to include Ricky Murray’s Billy Eckstine-like vocals. “New Day” features improvisations from the saxes and Marshall’s flute over percolating congas. Interestingly, “Tapestry from an Asteroid,” a ballad (easily filed “under jazz’) that became one of Ra’s most-performed works and the only work that the artist would ever revisit in performance or recording is represented. Tunes such as the rollicking “Jet Flight,” the steadily paced “Looking Outward,” and the bouncy, piano-driven “Space Jazz Reverie” are precursors to much of Ra’s cosmic material, including his most iconic song, “Space Is The Place.”
Any unearthed Sun Ra recording is cause for celebration. The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra documents the beginnings of a wild four decades of one of the most creative and important artists of the last century.
