In Print

Always in Trouble: An Oral History of ESP-Disk, the Most Outrageous Record Label in America
Jason Weiss (Wesleyan University Press)

By Ken Waxman

Visionary, charlatan, crook, naïf – these are just a few of the epitaphs applied to Bernard Stollman who founded the legendary ESP-Disk record label in the early 1960s. Interviewing Stollman and almost three dozen ESP artists, Jason Weiss tries to make sense of its history.

An attorney with aspirations towards art and entrepreneurship, Stollman made ESP a full-fledged imprint after hearing tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler. By chance he had stumbled upon a fertile jazz scene, rife with players who lacked recording opportunities. Soon ESP provided many of the era’s most important musical innovators with the freedom to record without interference. ESP jazz artists included Ayler, Burton Greene, Milford Graves, Paul Bley and Sun Ra plus rockers such as The Fugs and Pearls Before Swine.

Then problems arose. Most musicians insist they never received royalties for sessions which were subsequently licensed around the world. Some are sanguine. “If nobody was going to record you then where would you be if it wasn’t for ESP … putting you out there?” asks drummer Graves. Others are harsher. Pianist Greene: “Nobody expected anybody to get money out of the deal … [but] every time I heard he leased stuff … I said ‘What’s going on?’ He said ‘They burned me’… I said ‘Look Bernard you weren’t born yesterday.”

In essence the truth about ESP Disk and Stollman is revealed by inference. Despite the label’s and its artists’ subsequent fame, contemporary radio programmers, record stores and the general public didn’t buy in, or buy in great quantities. Plus, while Stollman loved signing new acts and releasing records, he ignored day-to-day business dealings. A first-class talent scout, by leaving the minutiae to others he was ultimately the author of his own – and the label’s – checkered reputation.

As today a resuscitated ESP-Disk repackages its past as it tries to rectify its spotted history, Weiss` volume captures its initial impact on the nascent experimental scheme in its participants own words.

--For The New York City Jazz Record April 2013

April 6, 2013

Pharoah Sanders

In the Beginning 1963-64
ESP-Disk ESP-4069

Pierre Favre

Drums and Dreams

Intakt CD 197

Connie Crothers - David Arner

Spontaneous Suite for Two Pianos

Rogueart R0G-037

Various Artists

Echtzeitmusik Berlin

Mikroton CD 14/15/16

Something In The Air: Multiple Disc Sets for the Adventurous

By Ken Waxman

Defying doomsayers who predicted the death of the LP, the CD’s disappearance appears oversold. True music collectors prefer the physical presence and superior fidelity of a well-designd CD package and important material continues to released. Partisans of advanced music, for instance, can choose any one of these sets. The only saxophonist to be part of saxophonist John Coltrane’s working group, tenorist Pharoah Sanders is celebrated for his own highly rhythmic Energy Music. In the Beginning 1963-64 ESP-Disk ESP-4069, a four CD-package highlight his steady growth. Besides Sanders’ first album as leader, very much in the freebop tradition, as part of quintet of now obscure players, the other previously released sounds capture Sanders’ recordings in the Sun Ra Arkestra. More valuable is a CD of unissued tracks where Sanders asserts himself in quartets led by cornetist Don Cherry or Canadian pianist Paul Bley. The set is completed by short interviews with all of the leaders. Oddly enough, although they precede his solo debut, Sanders’ playing is most impressive with Bley and Cherry. With more of a regularized beat via bassist David Izenson and drummer J.C. Moses, Cherry’s tracks advance melody juxtaposition and parallel improvisations with Sanders’ harsh obbligato contrasted with the cornetist’s feisty flourishes; plus the darting lines and quick jabs of pianist Joe Scianni provides an unheralded pleasure. Bley’s economical comping and discursive patterning lead the saxophonist into solos filled with harsh tongue-twisting lines and jagged interval leaps. With Izenson’s screeching assent and drummer Paul Motion’s press rolls the quartet plays super fast without losing the melodic thread. Sun Ra is a different matter. Recorded in concert, the sets include helpings of space chants such as “Rocket #9” and “Next Stop Mars”; a feature for Black Harold’s talking log drums; showcases for blaring trombones, growling trumpets; plus the leader’s propulsive half-down-home and half-outer-space keyboard. Sharing honking and double-tonguing interludes with Arkestra saxists Pat Patrick and Marshall Allen, Sanders exhibits his characteristic stridency. Enjoyable for Sun Ra’s vision which is spectacular and jocular, these tracks suggest why the taciturn Sanders soon went on his own.

Partially in reaction to vocifeous American players like Sanders, by the 1970s European innovators developed a spacious and subdued take on improvisation. This can be sampled via the solo work of Swiss percussionist Pierre Favre, a model of taste and restraint on Drums and Dreams Intakt CD 197 is. Overall it’s 1972’s Abanaba which is the defining masterwork, with 1970’s Drum Conversation and 1978’s Mountain Wind, the build up and elaboration of maturity. Favre has such command of the sonorous properties of his expanded kit that he can use approximations of tones from unusual sources such as guiro, conches, unlathed cymbals, thunder sheets plus a regular kit without bombast or showiness. A track such as Kyoto is a fascinating duet between kettle drum and tuned gongs, expanded by Theremin-like resonations; while “Gerunonius” is an essay in abrasion, as textures created by sawing with a bow on drum rims are integrated with shakes, pops and pulls. “Roro” fastens on triple sticking at supersonic speeds, producing ringing tones from log drums, cymbals and gongs, while the final track demonstrates how aggression can be paced as bell trees ping and snares sizzle. CD1 establishes a framework for juxtapositions, with silences integrated with kinetic paradiddles and ruffs. Sounding at times like multiple players, Favre’s distinctive sounds are likely to arise by twisting mallets on aluminum bars as from blunt whacks on oversized gongs. By 1978, his rhythmic palate had expanded so, that he could replicate the sound of a telephone bell ring, Chinese temple bell with equal facility and without any loss in power.

This mixture of delicacy and strength is expanded to its pianistic limits on Spontaneous Suite for Two Pianos Rogueart R0G-037 These four CDs capture an entire recording session beginning with the evocative acceleration from feathery chording to anvil-like kinetic pressure on CD1, track 1, and conclude with key-clipping near player-piano continuum on CD4, track 7. Anyone who follow dual keyboardist like Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia or Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson will be staggered by the work here. Completely improvised, the nine interlocking suites expose almost all variations of what can be extracted from 166 keys. Technical wizardry plus jazz inflections are apparent in the playing of Connie Crothers and David Arner, yet focussed reductionism as well as spontaneity is also on tap. Piano guru Lennie Tristano’s most accomplished student, New York-based Crothers has recorder with jazzmen like drummer Max Roach. Up-state New York’s Arner is associated with choreographers such as Meredith Monk. Playing side-by-side with layered chords, palindromes or in counterpoint, the two evoke many aspects of piano literature while creating their own. For instance “The Hoofer” which bounces and taps as a terpsichorean fantasia is followed by “Blues and the Moving Image”. Despite low-pitched glissandi, this blues is polyrhythmic, depending on a dusting of high-frequency tremolo to provide the necessary emotion. “The Reckoning” is meditative and linear, while “Density 88X2” moves from jocular patterns to blunt syncopation. An extended sequence like “City Rhapsody” may unroll staccatissimo with soundboard rumbles and ringing cadenzas in equal measures, but it never unravels or loses connectivity. Overall the real connections this duo exhibits is with their own histories. Basso notes on “Swing Migration” and “Fool” both unearth Tristanto-like themes among the cumulative cascades and pitch-sliding vibrations.

With the German capital now home to a mass of creative musicians, it takes 40 selections on three-CD anthology Echtzeitmusik Berlin Miikroton CD 14/15/16) to try to define the scene. Although currents of free jazz, notated music, punk-rock and all sorts of electronic programming are universally accepted, echtzeitmusik is defined differently by each innovator. For instance the long pauses and foreshortened breaths from Robin Hayward’s microtonal tuba and intermittent plinks from Morten Olsen’s rotating bass drum on “Deep Skin” may come from the same reductionist base as “Versprechen” which mutates piano strings strums by Andera Neumann with linear trumpet breaths from Sabine Ercklentz. But the studio collage that’s Annette Krebs’ “In-between”, mutating ring-modulator whooshes, music samples and layered voices has little in common except density with Antoine Chessex’s “Errances” which inflates a single saxophone’s tremolo timbres to near organ-like cascades. So what defines the sounds? The key may be “Blues No. 5” by Perlonex. Guitar feedback, turntable scratches plus drum smacks and electronic quivers reach an intensity that equals the emotionalism of a blues singer. Consequently honesty and innovation supersede musical forms. Echtzeitmusik Berlin allows the listener to sample and choose.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 18 #4

December 15, 2012

In Print

Music in My Soul
Noah Howard (Buddy’s Knife)

By Ken Waxman

Metaphorically, alto saxophonist Noah Howard’s musical life mirrored the history of jazz. Born April 6, 1943 in New Orleans, the music’s purported cradle, before his death on Sept. 3, 2010 in Belgium, Howard had travelled to San Francisco and New York, recorded for small labels like ESP-Disk, expatriated overseas, toured Europe, Africa and India, while developing ties with emerging local players. Completed just days before his death from a cerebral hemorrhage, Music in My Soul is written in the artless but competent prose of a constantly working musician with some haziness in chronology, spelling and details.

Still as reminisces about the changes which took place in jazz following the advances of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman from someone who seemed to be present every step of the way, the book is doubly valuable. Personal reminiscences from musicians who worked with or knew the alto saxophonist over the years are intermingled among the chapters, further elucidating Howard’s journey.

Following military service in the American South, where he experienced pre-Civil Rights era racism, a stint on the West Coast exposed Howard to mind-altering drugs and finally guidance into experimental sounds from trumpeter Dewey Johnson, who later played on Ascension. In New York, Howard’s addition of New Orleans-style rhythm to cerebral sound searching had him recording at 21. Gigging often at the Lower East Side’s legendary Slug’s Saloon, frequently as part of Sun Ra’s Arkestra, which he would sometimes rejoin in Europe, Howard befriended major figures such as Charles Mingus and Albert Ayler, who got him his first international job – in Montreal in winter – and formed lasting alliances with other New Thingers including tenor saxophonist Frank Wright, pianist Bobby Few and drummer Muhammad Ali – eventually forming a co-op working group in Europe.

From that point on Howard reveals his amateur author status. Although he devotes some paragraphs to the factors that influence his compositions and improvisations, most of the volume becomes a recitation of gigs and recording sessions done, musicians and friends met and recalled, plus near-tourist brochure reminiscences of countries in Africa and Asia visited. Finally comfortably settled with his wife of 30 years, a medical doctor, and helming his own AltSax label, Howard begins playing regularly in the US again in the ‘90s, scotching rumours that he was another deceased Free Jazzer. A presence at the Vision Festival, the saxman put out exceptional new CDs with the likes of poet Eve Packer and similarly grizzled drummer Bobby Kapp.

Now Music in My Soul will remain his legacy. Interesting in itself for some of its woollier tales about bringing experimental music to the hinterlands,

--For New York City Jazz Record August 2012

August 6, 2012

Rhapsody's 2011 Jazz Critics' Poll

Individual Ballot
From Ken Waxman

1) Your name and primary affiliation(s) (no more than two, please)

2) Ken Waxman

Jazz Word (www.jazzword.com )

3) Your choices for 2011's ten best new releases (albums released between Thanksgiving 2010 and Thanksgiving 2011, give or take), listed in descending order one-through-ten.

1. World Saxophone Quartet Yes We Can Jazzwerkstatt JW 098

2. Gerald Cleaver Uncle June Be It As I See It Fresh Sound New Talent FSNT-375

3. Hubbub Whobub Matchless MRCD 80

4. John Butcher & Gino Robair Apophenia Rastascan BRD 065

5. Daunik Lazro/Benjamin Duboc/Didier Lasserre Pourtant Les Cimes des Arbres Dark Tree DT 01

6. Marc Ducret Tower Vol. 2 Ayler Records AYLCD 119

7. Mural Live at the Rothko Chapel Rothko Chapel Publications No #

8. Connie Crothers/Bill Payne The Stone Set/Conversations New Artists NA 1044 CD

9. Schlippenbach Trio Bauhaus Dessau Intakt CD 183

10. Jamaaladeen Tacuma/Ornette Coleman For the Love of Ornette JazzWerkstatt JW 090

4) Your top-three reissues, again listed in descending order

1) FMP In Rückblick In Retrospect 1969-2010 FMP CD 137 - FMP CD 148

2) Steve Lacy School Days Emanem 5016

3) Sun Ra College Tour Vol. 1 The Complete Nothing Is… ESP Disk4060

5) Your choice for the year's best vocal album

There is none – 99% of so-called vocal jazz is no more than often superior pop music, if that.

6) Your choice for the year's best debut CD

Jaruzelski’s Dream-debut Jazz Gawronski Clean Feed CF 211CD

7) Your choice for the year’s best Latin jazz CD

Agustí Fernández & Joan Saura Vents psi 11.01

N.B.: Why is there a Latin-Jazz category if there isn’t a category for other hyphenated jazz music such as Klezmer-Jazz, Pop-Jazz, Classical-Jazz etc.? An exceptional so-called Latin-Jazz CD should be a good Jazz CD overall. Therefore I have chosen the best 2011 improvised CD played by two Latins – that is residents of Spain.

January 20, 2012

Traveling the Spaceways

Sun Ra, the Astro Black and other Solar Myths Paper Edited by John Corbett, Anthony Elms and Terri Kapsalis
White Walls/University of Chicago Press

Music Is Rapid Transportation

Edited by Daniel Kernohan

Charivari Press

To be informative and useful, books on music must be conceived of through a combination of enthusiasm and expertise. Too much of the former and the publication slides into salivating hagiography; too much of the later and it becomes a dry, pedagogical discourse. Luckily both these volumes avoid the obvious pitfalls, but there are times when extraneous or superfluous material affects both.

More ambitious, Music Is Rapid Transportation attempts to create a guide to recordings which its seven authors deem important to understand out-of-the-ordinary music. Sun Ra, the Astro Black and other Solar Myths on the other hand, is a compendium of information about enigmatic band leader Ra via scholarship, reminiscences and art.

All Canadian-based, though from different parts of the country, Transportation’s contributors discovered music was the chief motivating factor in their lives around the same time – their early teens. That this was variously in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, a time frame which affected what sorts of sounds they heard and appreciated; as did the availability of, in almost all cases LPs in their particular locations. All are, as Daniel Kernohan points out in his introduction, music collectors who still revel in the vast availability of recorded sounds.

That they all staked their claims to identity on non-mainstream music is the most interesting part of the volume, and it is expressed in first-person accounts of their journey from music fans to music expert/obsessive’s. Along the way each offers insights on accepting new music, whether he came to it as a musician, like Toronto-born trombonist Scott Thomson, now based in Montreal; as a photographer/writer/musician in the case of Bill Smith, a Londoner turned Torontonian who now lives on British Columbia’s Hornby Island; as an festival administrator in London who went into academe in Ottawa and Toronto as did Scots-born Alan Stanbridge; or as committed fans who follow other careers, which is what unites Montreal’s Lawrence Joseph, Toronto’s Dan Lander and Donal McGrath and White Rock, B.C.’s Vern Weber.

Familiarly enough each, along with his friends started off listening to whatever was the pop music of the day, including Hip Hop and Jazz-Rock fusion, then moved on to delve into literature about different musics and eventually began buying records on spec. None have completely abandoned more popular music, but now all are most interested in so-called experimental or avant-garde sounds. During the course of the essays not only are the challenges that go into following non-mainstream music outlined, but also the identical slow realization that came to most of them that these sounds will never have mass appeal. As Thompson notes after his musical epiphany was acknowledged: “It dawned on me that I simply wasn’t listening to music the same way my peers were … I pretty naively assumed that since I was overwhelmed by the raw beauty of John Lee Hooker for example, that all my friends would be too.”

Instead, rather than, as many so-called classical and pop music fans do, rejecting sounds because they don’t fit into preconceived slots, each of these music explorers constantly sought out even more new music to challenge their newly heightened sensibilities. Because of this as well they were frequently rewarded with new insights.

Consider Joseph’s description of a Xenakis CD: “Every serious music listener needs to hear some Xenakis, and while his music may not be to everyone's taste, his genius is undeniable and his impact on all future composers enormous.” Or from the same person, a description of how, initially lacking background, he came to appreciate a live performance by saxophonist Evan Parker, bassist Barry Guy and drummer Paul Lytton. “I spent the first part of the concert totally puzzled as to how to listen to this music, with irregular stop and starts ... from the sax, and similar lack of familiar territories from the bass and drums … but [by] the second set I got it and never looked back.”

In the same vein, McGrath describes the CDs by saxophonist Ornette Coleman he admires. “Coleman wishes to challenge himself. He wanted to avoid falling into a rut of becoming complacent. By playing instruments he had not yet mastered like the trumpet and violin, he found new kinds of expression … There is still a sentiment that one must learn to ride a horse before one flies … that is master the instrument … before one improvises freely … [Coleman’s] adventures in the 60s actually proved how unnecessary this might be.” Or further on in the volume when McGrath reveals his strategy for appreciating a Pascal Comelade LP. “It was an LP I listened to several times trying to unravel the mystery”.

Most music fans of any stripes won’t take the time to move out of their comfort zones to embrace new, non-popular music. By publishing these individual testimonies, this volume provides necessary succor for those who would follow a similar path.

But after that its appeal is more problematic. Since every one of the 172 discs extensively written about are attached to memories for Joseph, Lander, McGrath or Weber – the other two didn’t participate in writing longer appreciations – critical judgments are often clouded by nostalgia or personal psychological advances. Too many discs are described as “best”, “marvelous” or “life changing experiences”; strange connections between musicians are imagined; and some of the prose is given to the affectation that is more commonly found in art school essays or rock fanzine writings.

This may, in fact, be the only book dealing with so-called “outside”, mostly 20th Century recorded music, to not include an appreciation of a single disc by either Albert Ayler or John Coltrane, two of Jazz’s protean saxophone figures. Instead one disc by Coltrane’s wife, harpist Alice is included, as well as four by saxophonist Archie Shepp, an unabashed Coltrane follower, whose contributions to improvised music are arguably less noteworthy. Similar shortcomings also exist when notated and so-called pop music is discussed. Besides this, precisely because they mean something special to each man personally, Weber writes favorably about Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin IV and Joseph about Paul McCartney & Wings Band on the Run. Epiphanies for each man they may have created, but listening to either will not likely lead anyone else to experimental music.

Quibbling about individual selections may be a mug’s game, although the suspicion that enthusiasm overcomes expertise throughout is invariably confirmed. There is also one glaring anomaly. Why is Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue session, likely the best-selling Jazz record of all time printed here as Kinda Blue? If it’s a typo it should have been corrected; if an inside joke, it doesn’t amuse.

One-third the size of the other volume, Traveling the Spaceways comes from the expertise side of the continuum, with the essays informed by the writers’ enthusiasm for the oeuvre of Sun Ra (1914-1993), a major 20th Century outside-music figure, who for an extended period survived, created major works for his Arkestra and thrived in an atmosphere without radio play, media coverage or large scale disc distribution. Sun Ra’s musical career lasted longer and arguably influenced more people than more than a handful of players mentioned in Music Is Rapid Transportation, although one disc from his massive catalogue, Jazz in Silhouette is mentioned in that other volume.

In contrast, Traveling the Spaceways grew out of a symposium and installation dedicated to the work and thoughts of the composer, born in Birmingham, Ala. – or planet Saturn as he preferred to insist – and based in either New York of Philadelphia during his later period of fame; but whose musical maturity was defined in the Chicago of the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s.

Profusely illustrated, with vintage Ra photos, album cover and label art, ephemera from the collection of Ra and his associates, plus artists’ representations of his influence, the book does a masterful job of confirming that Ra’s oddness was actually part of the major currents of African-American thought, if one knows where to look.

Among the highlights are detailed investigations of Ra and Arkestra Chicago gigs during the late 1950s by scholar/discographer Robert L. Campbell; and an aural examination of some of the band’s earliest recordings by critic Kevin Whitehead noting similarities in Ra’s work to contemporary advanced compositions by more mainstream figures such as Shorty Rogers, Neal Hefti, Tadd Dameron and fellow Chicago pianist Andrew Hill. Other well-researched essays situate Ra’s triple concerns with the relatively static position of American Blacks in society; space travel imagery; and philo-Egyptianism well within a long tradition of Afro-American polemical writing and thought.

In fact, Graham Lock who wrote another book on Ra’s exploration of the links between the composer’s outer-space images and those of earlier African-American spirituals and sermons may have penned the most insightful essay here. “Making the vision real was a central impulse in Sun Ra’s performances,” he writes. “…if his vision had been dubbed ‘Afro Futurist’ the means he used to actualise (sic) it were steeped in 19th Century black cultural traditions.” And later on: “For Sun Ra empowering Astro Black mythology could replace a history of black … oppression because space … was the place where ‘there are no limits …’.”

Also included in this volume are textural analyses of Ra’s poetic, polemical and aphoristic writings, in the context of word play and early 20th century spiritualist movements. Some of the suppositions however lean more towards scholastic new criticism than methods to interpret the work of someone who, after all, was primarily a musical composer and improviser. Using the art of some early Sun Ra LP cover as a stepping off point, veteran academic Victor Margolin contributes a perceptive piece on Black graphic artists and designers in Chicago in the period following the Second World War. However these keen observations move further away from the focus on Ra,

Including essays, poetry, visual art and prose influenced by the Sun Ra persona, other chapters of the book are more problematic. A few complicate the picture by veering into other contemporary – and more fashionable –issues, which are only vestigial to Ra’s repertoire; some even confuse individual history and enthusiasm for insight.

Overall though, anyone interested in understanding more about the somewhat enigmatic career of Sun Ra should find new insights in the thoughtful scholarship that makes up most of Sun Ra, the Astro Black and other Solar Myths. Meanwhile those searching for a personalized guide to venture into listening to non-mainstream music will find some sonic threads they can follow and unravel in Music Is Rapid Transportation.

--Ken Waxman

July 17, 2011

Lest We Forget:

Clifford Jordan (1931-1993)
By Ken Waxman

Two of the milestone discs featuring tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan can serve as a summation of his musical life. The first, Blowing In From Chicago (1957, Blue Note), split with tenor man John Gilmore, played up his home town legacy. The second, These Are My Roots: Clifford Jordan Plays Led Belly (Atlantic 1965), featured Jordan’s highly personal rearrangement of some of the Texas songster’s uncompromising hollers, chain gang laments and folk songs for sextet augmented by a vocalist and a guitarist. Notwithstanding Jordan’s presence in ground-breaking ensembles such as bassist Charles Mingus’ sextet with Eric Dolphy and pianist Jaki Byard plus pianist Randy Weston’s African-oriented band, his talents were most comfortably expressed through the mainstream bop, blues and ballads that characterized his Windy City youth. “Bearcat”, one of his best-known compositions, first recorded in 1961 on the Jazzland album of the same name, could easily have fit in with among the blues-influenced tunes of his post-war Chicago.

A graduate of the legendary music program of the South Side’s DuSable High School, along with other tenor titans like Gene Ammons and Johnny Griffin, Jordan established himself in Chicago before moving on to New York, where within a short time he was working in the bands of established combo leaders as drummer Max Roach and trombonist J.J. Johnson. After his experience with Mingus and Weston, Jordan’s activities expanded in New York and aboard. From a base in Belgium, he toured Africa and Europe as a single for a time. In New York, Jordan helped found Frontier records, producing LPs for underappreciated musicians such as drummer Ed Blackwell and bassist Wilbur Ware. A faculty member at Henry Street Settlement House, he became a music consultant for Bed-Sty Youth in Action and the Pratt Institute; taught reed instruments and flute; conducted bands for the Jazzmobile School; and in 1975 participated in public schools lecture-concert series for Jazz Interactions. He even played Lester Young – an early saxophone influence – in Lady Day: A Musical Tragedy at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1972.

In demand as soloist with large ensembles such as Germany’s Hamburg Radio Big Band and the Metropole Orchestra of the Netherlands, Jordan never stopped recording – he’s featured on more than 100 discs – or combo work until his death from cancer. Among his long-term associations were membership in the Eastern Rebellion quartet, led by pianist Cedar Walton and in groups featuring trumpeters Art Farmer and Dizzy Reese, pianist Barry Harris and bassist Richard Davis.

Insistent that he would helm a big band before he died, Jordan finally attained his dream with a 16-piece, all-star unit whose most representative disc is on Mapleshade. Fittingly the title of that band’s 1990 release reflected Jordan’s long-time musical philosophy: Play What You Feel.

--For New York City Jazz Record May 2011

May 16, 2011

In Print: Traveling the Spaceways

Sun Ra, the Astro Black and other Solar Myths Edited by John Corbett, Anthony Elms and Terri Kapsalis
White Walls/University of Chicago Press

By Ken Waxman

Sun Ra would probably have thought it was fittingly appropriate if too long overdue, but Traveling the Spaceways is a well-researched compendium of information about jazz’s only bandleader to have his origin on the planet Saturn. The 14 chapters, gathered from on two-day symposium on the music, philosophy and influence of Ra (1914-1993), AKA Herman Poole Blount of Birmingham, Ala., deal with the music, art and long-lasting influence of the enigmatic band leader, positioning his astro-futurist philosophy within the major currents of African American thought. Profusely illustrated with vintage Ra photos, album cover and label art, ephemera from the collection of Ra and his associates, plus visual artists’ often full-color representations of the man and other mid-century Black trends, the book does a masterful job of outlining the pianist/bandleader’s importance.

Among the highlights is a detailed investigation of the Arkestra’s formative late 1950s years in its Chicago hometown by scholar/discographer Robert L. Campbell. Another provocative essay by critic Kevin Whitehead examines many of Ra’s earliest recording to prove that rather than being divorced from prevailing musical currents, Ra’s compositions had similarities to advanced tunes and arrangements by such then-mainstream figures as Shorty Rogers, Neal Hefti and Tadd Dameron.

Other articles situate Ra’s triple concerns with the relatively static demographic position of American Blacks at that time, his fascination with extraterrestrial and space-ship imagery, and his philo-Egyptianism, as being well within a long tradition of Afro-American polemical writing and thought, both secular and religious.

Further to this, Graham Lock provides what is arguably the most insightful essay, convincingly linking the composer’s outer-space fascination with earlier African-American spirituals and sermons. “Making the vision real was a central impulse in Sun Ra’s performances,” he writes. “… if his vision had been dubbed ‘Afro Futurist’ the means he used to actualise it were steeped in 19th Century black cultural traditions.” And later: “For Sun Ra empowering Astro Black mythology could replace a history of black … oppression because space … was the place where ‘there are no limits …’.”

Also included are textural analyses of Ra’s poetic, polemical and aphoristic writings, in the context of word play and early 20th century spiritualist movements. Some of the suppositions however lean more towards scholastic criticism than interpretations of the work of a musical composer and improviser. Using the art of some early Sun Ra LP cover as a stepping off point, Victor Margolin contributes a perceptive piece on Black graphic artists and designers in Chicago of that period. However these keen observations move further away from the Ra focus. Including essays poetry, visual art and prose influenced by the Sun Ra persona, other chapters of the book are more problematic. A few complicate the picture by veering into other more fashionable issues vestigial to Ra’s repertoire; some confuse individual enthusiasm for insight. Still, anyone interested in understanding more about the enigmatic career of Sun Ra will revel in the thoughtful scholarship that makes up most of this book.

--For New York City Jazz Record May 2011

May 16, 2011

Sun Ra

The Heliocentric Worlds
ESP-Disk 4062

Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet +1

3 Nights in Oslo

Smalltown Superjazz STSJ197CD

Anthony Braxton/Gerry Hemingway

Old Dogs (2007)

Mode Avant 9/12

Rivière Composers’ Pool

Summer Works 2009

Emanem 5301

Something in the Air

By Ken Waxman

Boxed sets of recorded music have long been a holiday gift. But sophisticated music fans won’t settle for slapped together “best of” collections. Boxes such as these, collecting multiple CDs for specific reasons, should impress any aware listener.

Anthony Braxton/Gerry Hemingway’s Old Dogs (2007) Mode Avant 9/12 for instance, is another installment in the ongoing recorded history of multi-reedman Braxton. The four CDs feature him and percussionist Hemingway, an integral part of the reedist’s bands from 1983 to 1994, but who has rarely played with him since that time. Each 60-minute inventive Invention was recorded in real time without edits or alternate takes. Extrasensory cooperation is demonstrated as Braxton moves among seven saxophones and Hemingway a percussion collection. Should Braxton’s soprano saxophone obbligato turn staccato and superfast, Hemingway responds with centred vibraphone pings plus affiliated marimba pops. If subterranean contrabass saxophone tongue stops and watery glottal punctuation raucously sound, then abrasive ruffs on ride cymbals and drum rims produce nearly identical timbres. Hemingway’s percussion command is such that in a heartbeat he can produced a tone midway between that of a dumbeck and a set of tin cans to contrast with the reedist’s irregular tonguing; then as swiftly bring his entire kit into play using press rolls and ruffs to replicate foot-tapping swing that complements Braxton’s rare forays into masterful, story-telling runs on tenor saxophone.

Another masterful saxophonist is German tenorist Peter Brötzmann. He never does anything by halves and Chicago Tentet +1’s 3 Nights in Oslo Smalltown Superjazz STSJ197CD consists of five CDs. No essay in self-aggrandizement, three of the discs feature band subsets. The two CDs featuring the ensemble are filled with the palpable excitement from 11 players collectively honking, fluttering and snorting. There’s space for all, with saxophonists Brötzmann and Mats Gustafsson creating reed gymnastics that encompass fortissimo runs, nephritic split tones and glottal punctuation. Contrapuntal brass layering melds Per Åke Holmlander’s elephantine tuba snorts, gut-bucket slurs from trombonists Jeb Bishop and Johannes Bauer, as drummers Paal Nilssen-Love’s and Michael Zerang’s flams and cymbal pressure chug underneath. Although it may seem that harmonies created by yapping horn blasts and polyrhythmic string friction from bassist Kent Kessler and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm are opaque, the band has such control that the climax isn’t blood vessel bursting flashiness, but contrapuntal divisions exposing every texture. Two smaller groupings stand out. The tenor saxophone battle between Ken Vandermark and Joe McPhee allows undulating trills to bring needed balance to the duo’s initial ghostly shrieks and altissimo split tones. Elsewhere, Bishop, Bauer, Holmlander and McPhee on pocket trumpet, meld such extended techniques as metal buzzes, pedal-point burbles and peeping lip trills without losing chromatic mooring.

Similarly the three CDs which make up Rivière Composers’ Pool Summer Works 2009 Emanem 5301 are divided among sessions by a quartet of Americans, bassist Kent Carter and woodwind player Etienne Rolin, plus Germans, violist Albercht Maurer and clarinetist Theo Jörgensmann, plus trio and duo interaction. What’s instructive is how the musicians’ smaller meetings suggest ideas that eventually coalesce into the title suite. On the successive Music for a Ghost Story and Dance to This, Jörgensmann/Carter/Maurer build up wide-ranging modulations into a capriccio-like showcase including Jörgensmann’s flying glissandi, Carter’s string slaps and Maurer’s portamento runs. These movements are put to good use during the CD-length suite. From the exposition, where Rolin’s broken-octave basset horn extensions, chanter-like respiration from Jörgensmann’s clarinet, high-energy viola lines and sul tasto bass runs expand the theme, the variations cycle through quartet, trio, duo and solo episodes. If the clarinet outputs altissimo screeches, it’s calmed by Carter’s sul tasto stops; while speedy violin glissandi set the stage for mid-range reed licks. Putting aside bel canto or dissonant timbres, the climax downshifts to clarinet glissandi which push all into a gentling, diminuendo finale.

The wild card in this group is Sun Ra’s three-CD set of The Heliocentric Worlds ESP-Disk 4062. It confirms the composer/pianist’s legacy as an avant-garde Duke Ellington. Key players, such as saxophonists Marshall Allen and John Gilmore, plus Ra himself on pioneering electronic keyboards, solo impressively. Not only does the re-mastered 1965 set contain a recently discovered third disc, but each CD includes bonus material: a documentary film, a photo archive and contemporary writing. Like Ellington, Ra’s intricately shaded and organized arrangements create symphonic timbres with only 13 musicians. Phantasmagoric and polyphonic, extended tone poems like The Sun Myth are shaped by full-band expressions plus harmonies which contrast tuned bongos and sul ponticello bass thumps, or elsewhere contrapuntal saxophone vibrations and boogie-woogie piano runs. While The Cosmos takes its shape from call-and-response horn work, on other tunes Ra’s musical alchemy encompasses formalist piano tones, chalumeau bass clarinet smears and frenetic trumpet triplets.

Each of these attractively packaged boxed sets demonstrates how expansive musical quality can be presented in an intelligent fashion. And each – or all – would make a fine addition to your CD collection.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 16 #4

December 9, 2010

Ronnie Boykins

The Will Come, Is Now
ESP 1099

Sun Ra

Featuring Pharoah Sanders & Black Harold

ESP 4054

Reissued and newly discovered sounds by composer/bandleader Sun Ra [1914-1993] are helping to fill gaps in his massive oeuvre and present a more complete picture of his activities. These two exceptional discs for instance, recorded a decade apart by a distinct Ra Arkestra and a valued member of his organization reveal additional – and unexpected – facets of Ra’s musical life.

Paradoxically, each suggests that despite his extraterrestrial trappings, the loquacious Ra may have actually been only as avant-garde as Duke Ellington, who similarly was never at a loss for words. Featuring Pharoah Sanders & Black Harold for example, combines previously un-issued and spottily distributed 1964 tracks that showcase musicians who otherwise didn’t play with the Arkestra. In this way the sessions are not unlike radio air checks that capture the work of unrecorded Ellington bands of the 1940s. Similar to what those slabs of the Ducal canon also reveal, the tracks prove that no matter how powerful the presence of tenor saxophonist Sanders – subbing for John Gilmore who had joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers – and log drummer/flutist Black Harold (Murray) – who would reappear for a time in the 1990s in Chicago’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble – is, their contributions don’t really modify Ra’s singular and mercurial vision.

Recorded in 1975, The Will Come, Is Now is the only disc led by bassist Ronnie Boykins [1935-1980], whose strength propelled the Arkestra from the later 1950s to mid-1960s. It raises yet another Ellington-related question. Like leadership forays by Ellington saxophonist Johnny Hodges and others which remained beholden to Ellington’s sound without playing any of his compositions, could it be, as scholars have observed about Ellington, that some of Ra set pieces actually arose from musical ideas his sidemen contributed? Certainly this CD’s six tracks played by a septet – the other members of which had no experience with Sun Ra – features sounds, music and the song titles, all written by Boykins, that have an unmistakable Arkestral cast.

George Avaloz’s conga, bells and shaker timbres plus Art Lewis’ percussion and drum beats that are audible throughout – not to mention Boykins’ vigorous bass underpinning – eerily evoke Ra small-band sessions as accurately as solo LPs by Hodges, or Rex Stewart among others, did Ellingtonia. Take a piece such as “Dawn Is Evening, Afternoon”, which cognitively layers surging reed passages on top of positioned drum press rolls and conga bumps. It sure sounds like a leaf from the Ra band book. More crucially however – and in a different fashion – Boykins’ unheralded but professional front line of trombonist Daoud Haroom and saxophonists Monty Waters, Jimmy Vass and Joe Ferguson easily take the sped-up and fragmented tempo changes in stride. Even the faux Oriental measures that at points place vamping horn exposition on top of Boykins’ walking bass don’t faze their close interaction.

This mixture of Bebop and Exotica is obvious throughout the CD. Squeals and snorts from Waters – who died just recently – and stinging counter lines from Vass, for instance, often make common cause with the berimbau-like shakes and bell ringing from the percussionists.

Boykins presents his own variation on post-modernism here as well. “Starlight At The Wonder Inn”, which named for a Chicago club where the Arkestra frequently had a residency, features a low-pitched, mellow string exploration by the bassist that actually seems to be Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss” rather than an original melody – a trope reminiscent of Ra’s performances with their frequent interpolation of quotes from other tunes. At the same time as the bassist’s expressive low-pitched intonation is exposed, Vass responds with sharp asides and the drummer with tough whacks and strokes. Boykins’ time-keeping skill is so impressive, in fact, than it’s obvious why in later years the Arkestra would often go for a protracted period without a bassist if Ra couldn’t find someone to properly replicate Boykins’ role

Happily Boykins is a member of the 16-piece Arkestra on Featuring Pharoah Sanders & Black Harold. Yet for added string heft the live date also includes second bassist Alan Silva, whose experience stretches from stints with Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor at the New Thing’s birth to cerebral sound stretching with the likes of British drummer Roger Turner and German trombonist Johannes Bauer in this century.

The most obvious exposure of the bass tag team is on “The Now Tomorrow”. In double counterpoint, one plays lanky sul tasto lines and the other answers with staccato shuffle bowing. A pseudo-ballad, at the top the piece includes doubled, piercing flute arpeggios, an unidentified mid-range chord that could come from either a string struck col legno or an oboe played moderato [!] and an extro that simultaneously involves pitched boogie-woogie-styled cadences on the piano and ringing celeste timbres.

Reassuringly familiar yet completely unique – like Ellington’s best work – Ra shapes the Klangfarbenmelodie through sudden twists and turns with looming multi-horn space chord explosions at one point and Africanized percussion forays or scrubbed string expositions elsewhere. A track like “Discipline 9” for example, whose impressionistic polyphony is built on sliding piano harmonies, at first appears to be an Ellingtonian or Mingusian-styled tone poem. Yet the middle section exposes an off-key vocalization of “We Travel the Spaceways”, while the drummers sound a shuffle beat and Ra clanks the keys as if he was playing for a beginner’s dance class. Finally among the clave and wood block chatter, friction and scrapes emerge with otherworldly intonation that can probably be traced back to Art Jenkins’ space voice.

Sanders’ almost patented overblowing, vocalization and altissimo shrieks are most clearly expressed on “The Other World” plus “The World Shadow” and its two affiliated extensions. But even here, he’s just one voice among many. Pat Patrick’s honking baritone saxophone is as prominent on the first tune, along with plunger puffs and darting sharp-toned triplets from trumpeters Al Evans and Chris Capers, plus gutbucket blats from trombonist Teddy Nance. With Ra nothing is simple however, so before the finale kicks in, the composition has gone through two further variations. Modulating through a Swing Era-style vamp, the background behind Patrick growls is transformed with double-gaited rhythms that not only show off call-and-response facility of the two trap-set drummers, but involve paradiddles, smacks, press rolls knocked out by nearly every musician playing percussion as well as Murray’s log drum textures.

This combination of kit and log drum pounding is also apparent on “The World Shadow”, along with Sanders vociferous screams and hocketing timbres, while Ra’s pianism half relates to Thelonious Monk and half to Cow Cow Davenport. Then, hard metallic clanging from cymbals, gongs and the like replace deep-dish percussion, Cat Anderson-like trumpet triplets become more obvious than the saxophone riffs and the choked, warbling space voice leads in to “Rocket Number 9” taken as another boogie-woogie. Before the miniature suite rappels downwards to dimuendo at the end of “The Voice of Pan” with log drumming following a gentling flute break, Sanders and Marshall Allen lock saxophones in a showdown worthy of Ellington sax battle by exuberant stars such as Paul Gonsalves. Glottal punctuation, double-quick cries and key pops issue from both horns with no differentiated or diminishing in reed strength from them or the other saxophonists who eventually join the fray.

Filled with exhilarating performances, this CD adds another notable session to the Ra cannon. Plus like an Ellington-tinged small group effort by the Duke’s closest associates, Boykins’ set not only provides equally memorable music, but a glimpse of the influences on and influences from Ra.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Black: 1. Cosmic Interpretation 2. The Other World 3. The Second Star is Jupiter 4. The Now Tomorrow 5. Discipline 9 6. Gods on a Safari 7. The World Shadow 8. Rocket Number 9 9. The Voice of Pan 10. Dawn Over Israel 11. Space Mates

Personnel: Black: Chris Capers (trumpet); Al Evans (trumpet and flugelhorn); Teddy Nance (trombone); Bernard Pettaway (bass trombone); Marshall Allen and Danny Davis (alto saxophones); Pharoah Sanders (tenor saxophone); Pat Patrick (baritone saxophone); Robert Cummings (bass clarinet); Black Harold [Murray] (flute and log drum); Sun Ra (piano and celeste) Alan Silva and Ronnie Boykins (bass); Clifford Jarvis and Jimmhi Johnson (drums) and Art Jenkins (space voice)

Track Listing: Will: 1. The Will Come, Is Now 2. Starlight At The Wonder Inn 3. Demon's Dance 4. Dawn Is Evening, Afternoon 5. Tipping On Heels 6. The Third I

Personnel: Will: Daoud Haroom (trombone, bells, shaker); Monty Waters (alto and soprano saxophones, bells and shaker); Jimmy Vass (flute, alto and soprano saxophones, bells and shaker); Joe Ferguson (flute, soprano and tenor saxophone and shaker); Ronnie Boykins (bass, sousaphone, bells and shaker); Art Lewis (percussion, drums, bells, shaker) and George Avaloz (conga, bells and shaker)

July 24, 2009

Sun Ra

Featuring Pharoah Sanders & Black Harold
ESP 4054

Ronnie Boykins

The Will Come, Is Now

ESP 1099

Reissued and newly discovered sounds by composer/bandleader Sun Ra [1914-1993] are helping to fill gaps in his massive oeuvre and present a more complete picture of his activities. These two exceptional discs for instance, recorded a decade apart by a distinct Ra Arkestra and a valued member of his organization reveal additional – and unexpected – facets of Ra’s musical life.

Paradoxically, each suggests that despite his extraterrestrial trappings, the loquacious Ra may have actually been only as avant-garde as Duke Ellington, who similarly was never at a loss for words. Featuring Pharoah Sanders & Black Harold for example, combines previously un-issued and spottily distributed 1964 tracks that showcase musicians who otherwise didn’t play with the Arkestra. In this way the sessions are not unlike radio air checks that capture the work of unrecorded Ellington bands of the 1940s. Similar to what those slabs of the Ducal canon also reveal, the tracks prove that no matter how powerful the presence of tenor saxophonist Sanders – subbing for John Gilmore who had joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers – and log drummer/flutist Black Harold (Murray) – who would reappear for a time in the 1990s in Chicago’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble – is, their contributions don’t really modify Ra’s singular and mercurial vision.

Recorded in 1975, The Will Come, Is Now is the only disc led by bassist Ronnie Boykins [1935-1980], whose strength propelled the Arkestra from the later 1950s to mid-1960s. It raises yet another Ellington-related question. Like leadership forays by Ellington saxophonist Johnny Hodges and others which remained beholden to Ellington’s sound without playing any of his compositions, could it be, as scholars have observed about Ellington, that some of Ra set pieces actually arose from musical ideas his sidemen contributed? Certainly this CD’s six tracks played by a septet – the other members of which had no experience with Sun Ra – features sounds, music and the song titles, all written by Boykins, that have an unmistakable Arkestral cast.

George Avaloz’s conga, bells and shaker timbres plus Art Lewis’ percussion and drum beats that are audible throughout – not to mention Boykins’ vigorous bass underpinning – eerily evoke Ra small-band sessions as accurately as solo LPs by Hodges, or Rex Stewart among others, did Ellingtonia. Take a piece such as “Dawn Is Evening, Afternoon”, which cognitively layers surging reed passages on top of positioned drum press rolls and conga bumps. It sure sounds like a leaf from the Ra band book. More crucially however – and in a different fashion – Boykins’ unheralded but professional front line of trombonist Daoud Haroom and saxophonists Monty Waters, Jimmy Vass and Joe Ferguson easily take the sped-up and fragmented tempo changes in stride. Even the faux Oriental measures that at points place vamping horn exposition on top of Boykins’ walking bass don’t faze their close interaction.

This mixture of Bebop and Exotica is obvious throughout the CD. Squeals and snorts from Waters – who died just recently – and stinging counter lines from Vass, for instance, often make common cause with the berimbau-like shakes and bell ringing from the percussionists.

Boykins presents his own variation on post-modernism here as well. “Starlight At The Wonder Inn”, which named for a Chicago club where the Arkestra frequently had a residency, features a low-pitched, mellow string exploration by the bassist that actually seems to be Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss” rather than an original melody – a trope reminiscent of Ra’s performances with their frequent interpolation of quotes from other tunes. At the same time as the bassist’s expressive low-pitched intonation is exposed, Vass responds with sharp asides and the drummer with tough whacks and strokes. Boykins’ time-keeping skill is so impressive, in fact, than it’s obvious why in later years the Arkestra would often go for a protracted period without a bassist if Ra couldn’t find someone to properly replicate Boykins’ role

Happily Boykins is a member of the 16-piece Arkestra on Featuring Pharoah Sanders & Black Harold. Yet for added string heft the live date also includes second bassist Alan Silva, whose experience stretches from stints with Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor at the New Thing’s birth to cerebral sound stretching with the likes of British drummer Roger Turner and German trombonist Johannes Bauer in this century.

The most obvious exposure of the bass tag team is on “The Now Tomorrow”. In double counterpoint, one plays lanky sul tasto lines and the other answers with staccato shuffle bowing. A pseudo-ballad, at the top the piece includes doubled, piercing flute arpeggios, an unidentified mid-range chord that could come from either a string struck col legno or an oboe played moderato [!] and an extro that simultaneously involves pitched boogie-woogie-styled cadences on the piano and ringing celeste timbres.

Reassuringly familiar yet completely unique – like Ellington’s best work – Ra shapes the Klangfarbenmelodie through sudden twists and turns with looming multi-horn space chord explosions at one point and Africanized percussion forays or scrubbed string expositions elsewhere. A track like “Discipline 9” for example, whose impressionistic polyphony is built on sliding piano harmonies, at first appears to be an Ellingtonian or Mingusian-styled tone poem. Yet the middle section exposes an off-key vocalization of “We Travel the Spaceways”, while the drummers sound a shuffle beat and Ra clanks the keys as if he was playing for a beginner’s dance class. Finally among the clave and wood block chatter, friction and scrapes emerge with otherworldly intonation that can probably be traced back to Art Jenkins’ space voice.

Sanders’ almost patented overblowing, vocalization and altissimo shrieks are most clearly expressed on “The Other World” plus “The World Shadow” and its two affiliated extensions. But even here, he’s just one voice among many. Pat Patrick’s honking baritone saxophone is as prominent on the first tune, along with plunger puffs and darting sharp-toned triplets from trumpeters Al Evans and Chris Capers, plus gutbucket blats from trombonist Teddy Nance. With Ra nothing is simple however, so before the finale kicks in, the composition has gone through two further variations. Modulating through a Swing Era-style vamp, the background behind Patrick growls is transformed with double-gaited rhythms that not only show off call-and-response facility of the two trap-set drummers, but involve paradiddles, smacks, press rolls knocked out by nearly every musician playing percussion as well as Murray’s log drum textures.

This combination of kit and log drum pounding is also apparent on “The World Shadow”, along with Sanders vociferous screams and hocketing timbres, while Ra’s pianism half relates to Thelonious Monk and half to Cow Cow Davenport. Then, hard metallic clanging from cymbals, gongs and the like replace deep-dish percussion, Cat Anderson-like trumpet triplets become more obvious than the saxophone riffs and the choked, warbling space voice leads in to “Rocket Number 9” taken as another boogie-woogie. Before the miniature suite rappels downwards to dimuendo at the end of “The Voice of Pan” with log drumming following a gentling flute break, Sanders and Marshall Allen lock saxophones in a showdown worthy of Ellington sax battle by exuberant stars such as Paul Gonsalves. Glottal punctuation, double-quick cries and key pops issue from both horns with no differentiated or diminishing in reed strength from them or the other saxophonists who eventually join the fray.

Filled with exhilarating performances, this CD adds another notable session to the Ra cannon. Plus like an Ellington-tinged small group effort by the Duke’s closest associates, Boykins’ set not only provides equally memorable music, but a glimpse of the influences on and influences from Ra.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Black: 1. Cosmic Interpretation 2. The Other World 3. The Second Star is Jupiter 4. The Now Tomorrow 5. Discipline 9 6. Gods on a Safari 7. The World Shadow 8. Rocket Number 9 9. The Voice of Pan 10. Dawn Over Israel 11. Space Mates

Personnel: Black: Chris Capers (trumpet); Al Evans (trumpet and flugelhorn); Teddy Nance (trombone); Bernard Pettaway (bass trombone); Marshall Allen and Danny Davis (alto saxophones); Pharoah Sanders (tenor saxophone); Pat Patrick (baritone saxophone); Robert Cummings (bass clarinet); Black Harold [Murray] (flute and log drum); Sun Ra (piano and celeste) Alan Silva and Ronnie Boykins (bass); Clifford Jarvis and Jimmhi Johnson (drums) and Art Jenkins (space voice)

Track Listing: Will: 1. The Will Come, Is Now 2. Starlight At The Wonder Inn 3. Demon's Dance 4. Dawn Is Evening, Afternoon 5. Tipping On Heels 6. The Third I

Personnel: Will: Daoud Haroom (trombone, bells, shaker); Monty Waters (alto and soprano saxophones, bells and shaker); Jimmy Vass (flute, alto and soprano saxophones, bells and shaker); Joe Ferguson (flute, soprano and tenor saxophone and shaker); Ronnie Boykins (bass, sousaphone, bells and shaker); Art Lewis (percussion, drums, bells, shaker) and George Avaloz (conga, bells and shaker)

July 24, 2009

Sun Ra

Secrets of the Sun
Atavistic ALP 266 CD

Sun Ra

Live in Cleveland 1975

Golden Years of New Jazz GY 29

Sun Ra’s near-cultish status among some fans, means that, unlike the fanatical disciples such as Dean Benedetti, who preserved non-commercially released work of Charlie Parker and other major jazz figures, Ra material-hoarders number in the hundreds. Consequently previously unknown – or un-circulated – material turns up with increased regularity. Both of these sessions fit into that category.

While not indispensable, each exposes a different facet of the pianist/bandleader’s career. Live in Cleveland 1975 captures a 15-piece version of the Arkestra – heavy on the woodwinds and percussion and Ra’s electronic keyboards – running through new variations on a series of Ra classics – and some surprises. The punningly titled Secrets of the Sun on the other hand, recorded in 1962, showcases smaller Ra units, often involved with piecing together the first versions of soon-to-be notable tunes.

Many of the Arkestra soloists who defined the band’s music over the long-term are accounted for, including saxophonists Marshall Allen and John Gilmore (on both CDs) plus singer June Tyson (on Cleveland) and bassist Ronnie Boykins (on Secrets). Yet the most noteworthy sections of these discs showcase players with shorter Arkestra tenure, or are those tracks featuring usual instruments.

Without a listed traps drummer, for example, the majority of Cleveland’s selections depend for their rhythmic impetus on the electric bass ostinato of the little-known Dale Williams. It’s his relentless and powerful licks plus the clattering congas of Atakatune and Odun on “Enlightenment” and other tunes that pump a proper number of beats into the songs to allow solo freedom. “Enlightenment”, for instance, finds Ra shuddering out the theme on organ while Damon Choice provides ringing vibraphone counterpoint.

Meanwhile the “Friendly Galaxy 2 – I am the Brother of the Wind, I Pharaoh” medley is given an wholly individualistic reading, built on Williams’ pedal-point anchoring, sharp trumpet blasts and the gentle curved lines of five unison flutes. As the horns wrap rococo-like around his voice, Ra proclaims one of his futuristic pronouncements, the message of which is strengthened by tremolo polytones arising from braying brass and flute fripperies.

More predictably – for Ra and the Arkesatra at least – “Sophisticated Lady” is recast as a Swing freak-out, with chordal pumps from the entire band, hocketing plunger tones from the trumpets – going Cootie Williams or Rex Stewart one better – and a stand-out story-telling tenor saxophone solo from Gilmore. As for Ra, his piano playing jumps between high-frequency and triple timing – owing a lot more to Earl “Fatha” Hines than Duke Ellington.

Another scene-setting highpoint comes at the beginning of the program with an 11-minute version of “Astro Nation (of the United World in Outer Space)”. Replete with chants and vocalizing from Eddie Thomas, Tyson and Ra plus hand clapping and backing vocals from everyone, it pinpoints Ra’s rapprochement with the 1970s – mixed up with 1930s echoes. Need a comparison? Imagine if Motown’s Norman Whitfield had produced A Love Supreme if the band was Walter Page’s Blue Devils. Williams’ relentless ostinato is prominent here, but so are squawking split tones from Allen’s alto saxophone and Ra’s slithering Moog rushes and texture propelling. As the vocalization encompasses soulful R&B, pop-gospel and sanctified church call-and-response – with Ra as the preacher. At points the chants and shouts reference the Four Top’s Levi Stubbs in full cry, at others a Full Gospel choir.

Massed pop-gospel choirs, Whitfield-styled production and a Love Supreme were all in the future for Ra and company in 1962. But on evidence of the seven tracks on Secrets of the Sun the concepts which would take Arkestra aggregations from being jazz-dance bands to who-knows-whats was being worked out in a series of sound laboratory experiments at that time.

Like Williams 13 years later, Boykins’ connective pedal point is crucial to most of the performances, bonding a lot more than just the rhythm section. Aiding him are extended vamps from Gilmore and some hand drumming from Tommy Hunter. Art Jenkins’ “space voice” though, which emerged over the years in various forms in different Arkestra line-ups, is an acquired taste. On “Solar Differentials” for instance, he sounds as if he’s gargling and bubble-blowing rather than singing. His kazoo-like tones are only made palatable through Ra’s pseudo boogie-woogie key fanning and Boykins’ thumping beat.

C, Scoby Stroman, drummer on nearly all the tracks is another challenge. Never adverse to take a flashy and thickly pulsed solo that emphasized rolls, flams and chinging cymbal work, his style is an extension of Max Roach’s and Art Blakey’s. As exceptional as that percussion sound may have been for Hard Bop, Ra’s mystical originality and a mishmash of Space Age sensibility demand something far different.

Stroman – aided by Hunter’s percussion – does introduce irregularly pitched rolls and drags on “Reflects Motion” while Ra lays out some kinetic, Cecil Taylor-styled dynamics. But as the piece develops with Gilmore overblowing and sliding theme variations up to altissimo and down again, Ra is wise enough to limit his contributions to comping. Meanwhile the drags, rebounds and clattering cymbals from the percussion section suggest a Perez Prado-performed Beatnik movie soundtrack – all of which is more than a bit distracting, considering what the saxophonist is doing upfront.

One of the few guitarists to ever be featured with Ra, Calvin Newborn also exhibits a stance wedded to the American present not the cosmos. On “Friendly Galaxy”, for instance, his electrified licks and Allen’s or Pat Patrick’s Frank Wess-style fluting mated with Hunter’s tympanis merely creates a version of Exotica.

Furthermore, although memorable and lively, the over-17½ -minute “Flight to Mars” magnifies these undigested jazz-to-mysticism transitions even more. Ra-centric in that it mixes march tempo, rocket-launch intimations and chants, it’s more Bebop in Space than Arkestra by definition. Stroman’s cynosure rhythms have him laying into the traps, ranging over the kit in showy solos as if he is a mutation of Roach and Buddy Rich combined. Allen contributes double-tongued flute peeps, and during his andante arpeggios Ra evidently can’t decide whether to be Errol Garner or Hines. The situation gets more inchoate later on as the otherwise reliable Boykins suddenly begins channeling Slam Stewart. He saws his strings into col legno double-stopping ending in a contrapuntal face off with Gilmore’s sax runs. Meanwhile Newborn’s chromatic single-string licks begin working themselves backwards from Wes Montgomery emulations to Charlie Christian-like twangs. A summation series of octave jumps and runs from Ra – with Boykins seconding him – prevent the tune from dissolving into expected cliché of shout choruses and trading fours, but before Ra redefines the situation, apparently the tape ran out and the music unexpectedly ends..

Not the recommended starting point for those new to Ra, these CDs will still give pleasure to listeners who haven’t been exposed to many of Ra and the Arkestra's discs. The sessions will also probably be treasured and examined with Talmudic concentration by convinced Ra completists.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Secrets: 1. Friendly Galaxy 2. Solar Differentials 3. Space Aura 4. Love in Outer Space 5. Reflects Motion 6. Solar Symbols 7. Flight to Mars

Personnel: Secrets: (collective) Al Evans (flugelhorn); Eddie Gale (trumpet); Marshall Allen (alto saxophone, flute, morrow and percussion); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, space bird sounds, space drums and vocal); Pat Patrick (baritone saxophone, flute, bongo and space drums); Sun Ra (piano and gong); Calvin Newborn (guitar); Ronnie Boykins (bass) Tommy Hunter (drums, percussion, space bird sounds and reverb); C. Scoby Stroman (drums); Jimmy Johnson (percussion) and Art Jenkins (space voice)

Track Listing: Cleveland: 1. Astro Nation (of the United World in Outer Space) 2. Enlightenment 3. Love in Outer Space 4. Theme of the Stargazers – the Satellites are Spinning 5. Friendly Galaxy 2 – I am the Brother of the Wind, I Pharaoh 6. Synthesizer Solo 7. Sophisticated Lady

Personnel: Cleveland: Akh Tal Ebah and Kwame Hadi (trumpets); Marshall Allen and Danny Davis (alto saxophone and flute); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone); Eloe Omoe (bass clarinet and flute); Danny Thompson (baritone saxophone and flute); James Jacson (bassoon, flute and infinity drum); Sun Ra (piano, organ and moog); Damon Choice (vibraphone); Dale Williams (electric bass); Atakatune and Odun (congas); June Tyson (vocal and dance) and Eddie Thomas (vocal and dance)

June 18, 2009

Sun Ra

Live in Cleveland 1975
Golden Years of New Jazz GY 29

Sun Ra

Secrets of the Sun

Atavistic ALP 266 CD

Sun Ra’s near-cultish status among some fans, means that, unlike the fanatical disciples such as Dean Benedetti, who preserved non-commercially released work of Charlie Parker and other major jazz figures, Ra material-hoarders number in the hundreds. Consequently previously unknown – or un-circulated – material turns up with increased regularity. Both of these sessions fit into that category.

While not indispensable, each exposes a different facet of the pianist/bandleader’s career. Live in Cleveland 1975 captures a 15-piece version of the Arkestra – heavy on the woodwinds and percussion and Ra’s electronic keyboards – running through new variations on a series of Ra classics – and some surprises. The punningly titled Secrets of the Sun on the other hand, recorded in 1962, showcases smaller Ra units, often involved with piecing together the first versions of soon-to-be notable tunes.

Many of the Arkestra soloists who defined the band’s music over the long-term are accounted for, including saxophonists Marshall Allen and John Gilmore (on both CDs) plus singer June Tyson (on Cleveland) and bassist Ronnie Boykins (on Secrets). Yet the most noteworthy sections of these discs showcase players with shorter Arkestra tenure, or are those tracks featuring usual instruments.

Without a listed traps drummer, for example, the majority of Cleveland’s selections depend for their rhythmic impetus on the electric bass ostinato of the little-known Dale Williams. It’s his relentless and powerful licks plus the clattering congas of Atakatune and Odun on “Enlightenment” and other tunes that pump a proper number of beats into the songs to allow solo freedom. “Enlightenment”, for instance, finds Ra shuddering out the theme on organ while Damon Choice provides ringing vibraphone counterpoint.

Meanwhile the “Friendly Galaxy 2 – I am the Brother of the Wind, I Pharaoh” medley is given an wholly individualistic reading, built on Williams’ pedal-point anchoring, sharp trumpet blasts and the gentle curved lines of five unison flutes. As the horns wrap rococo-like around his voice, Ra proclaims one of his futuristic pronouncements, the message of which is strengthened by tremolo polytones arising from braying brass and flute fripperies.

More predictably – for Ra and the Arkesatra at least – “Sophisticated Lady” is recast as a Swing freak-out, with chordal pumps from the entire band, hocketing plunger tones from the trumpets – going Cootie Williams or Rex Stewart one better – and a stand-out story-telling tenor saxophone solo from Gilmore. As for Ra, his piano playing jumps between high-frequency and triple timing – owing a lot more to Earl “Fatha” Hines than Duke Ellington.

Another scene-setting highpoint comes at the beginning of the program with an 11-minute version of “Astro Nation (of the United World in Outer Space)”. Replete with chants and vocalizing from Eddie Thomas, Tyson and Ra plus hand clapping and backing vocals from everyone, it pinpoints Ra’s rapprochement with the 1970s – mixed up with 1930s echoes. Need a comparison? Imagine if Motown’s Norman Whitfield had produced A Love Supreme if the band was Walter Page’s Blue Devils. Williams’ relentless ostinato is prominent here, but so are squawking split tones from Allen’s alto saxophone and Ra’s slithering Moog rushes and texture propelling. As the vocalization encompasses soulful R&B, pop-gospel and sanctified church call-and-response – with Ra as the preacher. At points the chants and shouts reference the Four Top’s Levi Stubbs in full cry, at others a Full Gospel choir.

Massed pop-gospel choirs, Whitfield-styled production and a Love Supreme were all in the future for Ra and company in 1962. But on evidence of the seven tracks on Secrets of the Sun the concepts which would take Arkestra aggregations from being jazz-dance bands to who-knows-whats was being worked out in a series of sound laboratory experiments at that time.

Like Williams 13 years later, Boykins’ connective pedal point is crucial to most of the performances, bonding a lot more than just the rhythm section. Aiding him are extended vamps from Gilmore and some hand drumming from Tommy Hunter. Art Jenkins’ “space voice” though, which emerged over the years in various forms in different Arkestra line-ups, is an acquired taste. On “Solar Differentials” for instance, he sounds as if he’s gargling and bubble-blowing rather than singing. His kazoo-like tones are only made palatable through Ra’s pseudo boogie-woogie key fanning and Boykins’ thumping beat.

C, Scoby Stroman, drummer on nearly all the tracks is another challenge. Never adverse to take a flashy and thickly pulsed solo that emphasized rolls, flams and chinging cymbal work, his style is an extension of Max Roach’s and Art Blakey’s. As exceptional as that percussion sound may have been for Hard Bop, Ra’s mystical originality and a mishmash of Space Age sensibility demand something far different.

Stroman – aided by Hunter’s percussion – does introduce irregularly pitched rolls and drags on “Reflects Motion” while Ra lays out some kinetic, Cecil Taylor-styled dynamics. But as the piece develops with Gilmore overblowing and sliding theme variations up to altissimo and down again, Ra is wise enough to limit his contributions to comping. Meanwhile the drags, rebounds and clattering cymbals from the percussion section suggest a Perez Prado-performed Beatnik movie soundtrack – all of which is more than a bit distracting, considering what the saxophonist is doing upfront.

One of the few guitarists to ever be featured with Ra, Calvin Newborn also exhibits a stance wedded to the American present not the cosmos. On “Friendly Galaxy”, for instance, his electrified licks and Allen’s or Pat Patrick’s Frank Wess-style fluting mated with Hunter’s tympanis merely creates a version of Exotica.

Furthermore, although memorable and lively, the over-17½ -minute “Flight to Mars” magnifies these undigested jazz-to-mysticism transitions even more. Ra-centric in that it mixes march tempo, rocket-launch intimations and chants, it’s more Bebop in Space than Arkestra by definition. Stroman’s cynosure rhythms have him laying into the traps, ranging over the kit in showy solos as if he is a mutation of Roach and Buddy Rich combined. Allen contributes double-tongued flute peeps, and during his andante arpeggios Ra evidently can’t decide whether to be Errol Garner or Hines. The situation gets more inchoate later on as the otherwise reliable Boykins suddenly begins channeling Slam Stewart. He saws his strings into col legno double-stopping ending in a contrapuntal face off with Gilmore’s sax runs. Meanwhile Newborn’s chromatic single-string licks begin working themselves backwards from Wes Montgomery emulations to Charlie Christian-like twangs. A summation series of octave jumps and runs from Ra – with Boykins seconding him – prevent the tune from dissolving into expected cliché of shout choruses and trading fours, but before Ra redefines the situation, apparently the tape ran out and the music unexpectedly ends..

Not the recommended starting point for those new to Ra, these CDs will still give pleasure to listeners who haven’t been exposed to many of Ra and the Arkestra's discs. The sessions will also probably be treasured and examined with Talmudic concentration by convinced Ra completists.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Secrets: 1. Friendly Galaxy 2. Solar Differentials 3. Space Aura 4. Love in Outer Space 5. Reflects Motion 6. Solar Symbols 7. Flight to Mars

Personnel: Secrets: (collective) Al Evans (flugelhorn); Eddie Gale (trumpet); Marshall Allen (alto saxophone, flute, morrow and percussion); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, space bird sounds, space drums and vocal); Pat Patrick (baritone saxophone, flute, bongo and space drums); Sun Ra (piano and gong); Calvin Newborn (guitar); Ronnie Boykins (bass) Tommy Hunter (drums, percussion, space bird sounds and reverb); C. Scoby Stroman (drums); Jimmy Johnson (percussion) and Art Jenkins (space voice)

Track Listing: Cleveland: 1. Astro Nation (of the United World in Outer Space) 2. Enlightenment 3. Love in Outer Space 4. Theme of the Stargazers – the Satellites are Spinning 5. Friendly Galaxy 2 – I am the Brother of the Wind, I Pharaoh 6. Synthesizer Solo 7. Sophisticated Lady

Personnel: Cleveland: Akh Tal Ebah and Kwame Hadi (trumpets); Marshall Allen and Danny Davis (alto saxophone and flute); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone); Eloe Omoe (bass clarinet and flute); Danny Thompson (baritone saxophone and flute); James Jacson (bassoon, flute and infinity drum); Sun Ra (piano, organ and moog); Damon Choice (vibraphone); Dale Williams (electric bass); Atakatune and Odun (congas); June Tyson (vocal and dance) and Eddie Thomas (vocal and dance)

June 18, 2009

Sun Ra

On Jupiter
Art Yard CD 004

Sun Ra

Sleeping Beauty

Art Yard CD 003

Unlike many committed sonic experimenters, keyboardist/composer/band leader Sun Ra (1914-1993) never denigrated any type of music – he used them for his own ends.

Thus these notable 1979 sessions, recorded when his Intergalactic Myth Science Solar Arkestra numbered 20 plus musicians, do more than promulgate Ra’s usual mixture of Black Pride and Science Fiction in an improvised jazz context. The compositions add elements of impressionistic moodiness, gospel harmonies, doo-wop vocals, solo piano blues and big band riffs. Furthermore, post-production processing plus the distortions available from electrified guitar, bass, piano and organ also bring out echoes of rock, R&B and even disco.

Still the Arkestra – which continues to tour extensively years after Ra has returned to his purported birth place of the planet Saturn – confirms its peerless individuality on every track here. For instanced the contrapuntal nasality of the oboe of Marshall Allen, who now leads the band, can be heard in broken octave concordance with wiggling electric piano lines or interrupting the flams and rebounds of the band’s three percussionists. Meanwhile the coarse cries and irregular vibrato of John Gilmore’s tenor saxophone slice through slurping brass and reed harmonies and toughens vocal chants which plead “UFO UFO/Take me where I wanna go”. A brassy obbligato from Michael Ray’s trumpet sustains fanfares as female vocalists suggest “Knocking on the door of the Cosmos”, then add punctuation to rhythmic clapping.

With James Jacson’s bassoon provide the bottom on piano Ra can sound like Errol Garner one moment and Cecil Taylor the next. High-class Arkestra work, if these CDs have any drawbacks it’s that each times out at approximately 30 minutes and could easily have been combined.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #2

October 8, 2008

Sun Ra & His Outer Space Arkestra

Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue
Atavistic UMS ALP 265 CD

Sun Ra

The Complete Disco 3000 Concert

Art Yard CD 001

Nearly 15 years after his death – oops, leave-taking for another planet – reissued, unknown and newly discovered sessions by keyboardist/composer/band leader Sun Ra (1914-1993) continue to appear. With the facilities of his own Saturn label plus whichever label(s) he was signed to at the time available to him, Ra evidently recorded just about every scrap of sound involving him and his band.

Furthermore, although Ra was first and foremost a large ensemble specialist – he directed the last constantly working big band – if the occasion demanded, he fronted small groups as well – as these fascinating documents attest. As tradition-oriented as he was futuristic, Ra’s set list was as colossal as it was unpredictable. Thus these discs recorded in 1973, 1977 and 1978, contain not only new material such as both CDs’ title tracks, but a mixture of Ra “hits” such as “We Travel the Spaceways” and “Sun of the Cosmos” and standards such as “My Favorite Thing” and “Nature Boy”.

Taking the discs separately, Disco 3000, a two-CD set from a 1978 Milan concert, showcases probably the smallest band with which Ra ever toured. Besides himself on piano, organ, moog synthesizer, rhythm machine and vocals plus a brief appearance by band singer June Tyson, there are only three other players – Michael Ray on trumpet and vocals, John Gilmore on tenor saxophone, drums and vocals and Luqman Ali on drums and vocals. The tracks from 1977 on Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats (sic) Blue features a tentet – Ra, Gilmore and Ali plus Akh Tal Ebah on trumpet and flugelhorn; Marshall Allen and Danny Davis on alto saxophones and flutes; James Jackson on flute and bassoon; Eloe Omoe on bass clarinet; Richard “Radu” Williams on bass and Atakatune on conga. The final two tracks are from 1973 with two versions of “I’ll Get By” arranged as a solo vehicle for either Ebah or Gilmore, backed by Ra’s pumping, decidedly pre-bop organ and Ronnie Boykins’ rhythmically solid bass line.

Especially because of the bassist, either version is moving in its simplicity, but both curiously exist outside of the-then contemporary time frame. On its own, Ra’s pumping and syncopation on organ resemble Fats Waller’s approach to the double keyboard more than anything played post-Jimmy Smith. Ebah’s lightly swinging chromatic reading of the tune wouldn’t have been out of place with Jimmy Lunceford’s or Fletcher Henderson’s band. Even Gilmore’s relaxed tonality and undulating exploration of the piece – which almost never strays from the melody – puts him in the Chu Berry-Herschel Evans early Swing mode. It contains none of the harmonic advances that Coleman Hawkins latterly brought to the horn in the 1940s and 1950s.

Gilmore takes on the spectre of John Coltrane however when, accompanied by the full band in1977, he performs “My Favorite Things”, one of Trane’s signature pieces for soprano saxophone. Although Coltrane was fragmenting the tune into nearly unrecognizable molecules by his death in 1967, Gilmore, playing tenor only is more restrained and respectful of the theme. At the same time, Gilmore who was touted by Trane as one of the building blocks in his – Coltrane’s – mature style, still flutter tongues and rolls out split tones. Gilmore’s also no cynosure. To attain its conclusive form, his elaboration of the theme depend on Ra’s tremolo, flowery and hand-over-hand accompaniment plus percussive boogie-woogie-like comping, as well as some clattering slaps from Ali.

Others tracks on the CD are more modern – especially the newly discovered “Untitled”, with its slurping bassoon and snorting bass clarinet involved in a staccato chase that ends up as discordant as Ra’s pianism is legato. Yet the overriding impression from the session is that of an older Ra coming to terms with his past. Surging on pop and bang friction from Akatune’s conga drumming, 1977’s “I’ll Get By” contrasts markedly with the 1973 versions. Although Gilmore is again channeling Chu Berry, Ali gives the impressions he’s manipulating a stripped down “cocktail drum” set and Ra’s metronomic runs and high-frequency cadences recalls Teddy Wilson Errol Garner and even George Shearing. With left-handed feints and dragging cross patterns, his solo suggests a time before the jet plane, let alone the rock ship was in common use.

Rocket ships and space travel are front-and-centre in 1978 for The Complete Disco 3000 Concert, especially when the stripped down Ra crew outputs a selection of Arkestra favorites. “We Travel the Spaceways” gets an energetic treatment, with Ra singing lead while thrusting out agitato and staccato piano clusters; Ray and Gilmore alternately squeaking in the stratosphere and unearthing subterranean growls as the band hand-claps and exits the stage.

“Dance of the Cosmo Aliens” is built on a constant drum beat and massive gong reverberations audible while Ra pulsates spliced and smashed nearly liquid coloration from his Moog, along with triggered drum machine clinks, bass drum backbeat and maracas-like friction. Before concluding with a gong resonation that would have impressed J. Arthur Rank, he snakes out a chord that is as slippery and slinky as if it was played on a Farfisa organ. “Spontaneous Simplicity” features a synthesizer tone midway between a vibraharp and a gamelan, as well as throbbing organ riffs, although most of the tune is a showcase for Ray’s twisted and bent vibrated grace notes. Even “Echoes of the World” is presented as a fantasia for Gilmore’s Tranesque – or is it actually Gilmoresque? – styling, all double-tongued and double-timed, as well as tinkling keyboard fills from Ra.

Then there’s the title tune, which fades in-and-out of aural focus as Tyson helps Ra interpolate “Space is the Place” into the theme, while Gilmore contributes double-tongued trills and Ray’s plunger work builds up to a blues tonality. Before Gilmore has finishes chewing through the tune with long-lined tone extensions and Ray aims for Cat Anderson-like stratospheric triplets, Ra elaborates separate melodies – neither particularly disco-like – from each hand. One thumps and crunches with incontinent rhythms from the Moog, while the other uses the organ’s fluttering watery grooves to make its point. Ali’s – and perhaps Gilmore’s – drumming helps to push the undulating overtones into place, but suppleness is missing with no double bass present.

Most notably, the Janus-like future-past dichotomy that was present on the earlier disc remains a sub-theme here. “When There is no Sun” includes atonal horn trills and smears, a poetic recitation by the band in toto, a brief recap of “Space is the Place”, Ra splashing and splaying polyphonic themes from both electronic keyboards, and wiggling and whooshing rocket-launching oscillations. But it ends with a Tatum-like solo piano run though of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.

The vibes – to use a 1970s word – are even more retro on “Sky Blues”. A throwback to the sort of honky-tonk riffs Ra must have internalized growing up in Alabama – recall that Avery Parish, composer of “After Hours” was a friend – this could be Ra’s rent party homage. Is he channeling Ray Bryant or is it Jimmy Yancy or Little Brother Montgomery? With the piano outlook adding a constant walking bass line to the theme development and Ali whacking a thick shuffle beat, Ra’s key ruffling provides the appropriate backdrop to Ray’s vamps and riffs plus Gilmore’s tough tenor honking that could have migrated from a David “Fathead” Newman or Don Wilkerson session.

Ra’s phantasmagoric ability to simultaneously create in the past, present and future is showcased well on both of these discs. While nothing here approaches indispensable Ra, with a mind as fertile as Ra’s – and sidemen this committed – it’s always valuable to get a new glimpse into his compositional and performance strategy. Additionally, more easily available Ra is always welcome.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Blues: 1. Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue* 2. I'll Get By 3. My Favorite Things 4. Untitled 5. Nature Boy 6. Tenderly 7. Black Magic; 8. I'll Get By+ 9. I'll Get By+

Personnel: Blues: Akh Tal Ebah (trumpet and flugelhorn); Marshall Allen and Danny Davis (alto saxophone and flute); James Jackson (flute and bassoon); Eloe Omoe (bass clarinet); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone); Sun Ra (piano or organ); Richard “Radu” Williams* or Ronnie Boykins+(bass); Luqman Ali (drums) and Atakatune (conga)

Track Listing: Disco: Disc 1: 1. Disco 3000 2. Sun of the Cosmos 3. Echos of The World 4. Geminiology 5. Sky Blues 6. Friendly Galaxy Disc 2: 1. Third Planet incl, Friendly Galaxy 2. Dance of the Cosmo Aliens 3. Spontaneous Simplicity 4. Images incl, Over The Rainbow 5. When There is no Sun 6. We Travel the Spaceways

Personnel: Disco: Michael Ray (trumpet and vocals); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone, drums and vocals); Sun Ra (piano, organ, moog synthesizer, rhythm machine and vocals); Luqman Ali (drums and vocals) and June Tyson (vocals)

May 3, 2008

Sun Ra

The Complete Disco 3000 Concert
Art Yard CD 001

Sun Ra & His Outer Space Arkestra

Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue

Atavistic UMS ALP 265 CD

Nearly 15 years after his death – oops, leave-taking for another planet – reissued, unknown and newly discovered sessions by keyboardist/composer/band leader Sun Ra (1914-1993) continue to appear. With the facilities of his own Saturn label plus whichever label(s) he was signed to at the time available to him, Ra evidently recorded just about every scrap of sound involving him and his band.

Furthermore, although Ra was first and foremost a large ensemble specialist – he directed the last constantly working big band – if the occasion demanded, he fronted small groups as well – as these fascinating documents attest. As tradition-oriented as he was futuristic, Ra’s set list was as colossal as it was unpredictable. Thus these discs recorded in 1973, 1977 and 1978, contain not only new material such as both CDs’ title tracks, but a mixture of Ra “hits” such as “We Travel the Spaceways” and “Sun of the Cosmos” and standards such as “My Favorite Thing” and “Nature Boy”.

Taking the discs separately, Disco 3000, a two-CD set from a 1978 Milan concert, showcases probably the smallest band with which Ra ever toured. Besides himself on piano, organ, moog synthesizer, rhythm machine and vocals plus a brief appearance by band singer June Tyson, there are only three other players – Michael Ray on trumpet and vocals, John Gilmore on tenor saxophone, drums and vocals and Luqman Ali on drums and vocals. The tracks from 1977 on Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats (sic) Blue features a tentet – Ra, Gilmore and Ali plus Akh Tal Ebah on trumpet and flugelhorn; Marshall Allen and Danny Davis on alto saxophones and flutes; James Jackson on flute and bassoon; Eloe Omoe on bass clarinet; Richard “Radu” Williams on bass and Atakatune on conga. The final two tracks are from 1973 with two versions of “I’ll Get By” arranged as a solo vehicle for either Ebah or Gilmore, backed by Ra’s pumping, decidedly pre-bop organ and Ronnie Boykins’ rhythmically solid bass line.

Especially because of the bassist, either version is moving in its simplicity, but both curiously exist outside of the-then contemporary time frame. On its own, Ra’s pumping and syncopation on organ resemble Fats Waller’s approach to the double keyboard more than anything played post-Jimmy Smith. Ebah’s lightly swinging chromatic reading of the tune wouldn’t have been out of place with Jimmy Lunceford’s or Fletcher Henderson’s band. Even Gilmore’s relaxed tonality and undulating exploration of the piece – which almost never strays from the melody – puts him in the Chu Berry-Herschel Evans early Swing mode. It contains none of the harmonic advances that Coleman Hawkins latterly brought to the horn in the 1940s and 1950s.

Gilmore takes on the spectre of John Coltrane however when, accompanied by the full band in1977, he performs “My Favorite Things”, one of Trane’s signature pieces for soprano saxophone. Although Coltrane was fragmenting the tune into nearly unrecognizable molecules by his death in 1967, Gilmore, playing tenor only is more restrained and respectful of the theme. At the same time, Gilmore who was touted by Trane as one of the building blocks in his – Coltrane’s – mature style, still flutter tongues and rolls out split tones. Gilmore’s also no cynosure. To attain its conclusive form, his elaboration of the theme depend on Ra’s tremolo, flowery and hand-over-hand accompaniment plus percussive boogie-woogie-like comping, as well as some clattering slaps from Ali.

Others tracks on the CD are more modern – especially the newly discovered “Untitled”, with its slurping bassoon and snorting bass clarinet involved in a staccato chase that ends up as discordant as Ra’s pianism is legato. Yet the overriding impression from the session is that of an older Ra coming to terms with his past. Surging on pop and bang friction from Akatune’s conga drumming, 1977’s “I’ll Get By” contrasts markedly with the 1973 versions. Although Gilmore is again channeling Chu Berry, Ali gives the impressions he’s manipulating a stripped down “cocktail drum” set and Ra’s metronomic runs and high-frequency cadences recalls Teddy Wilson Errol Garner and even George Shearing. With left-handed feints and dragging cross patterns, his solo suggests a time before the jet plane, let alone the rock ship was in common use.

Rocket ships and space travel are front-and-centre in 1978 for The Complete Disco 3000 Concert, especially when the stripped down Ra crew outputs a selection of Arkestra favorites. “We Travel the Spaceways” gets an energetic treatment, with Ra singing lead while thrusting out agitato and staccato piano clusters; Ray and Gilmore alternately squeaking in the stratosphere and unearthing subterranean growls as the band hand-claps and exits the stage.

“Dance of the Cosmo Aliens” is built on a constant drum beat and massive gong reverberations audible while Ra pulsates spliced and smashed nearly liquid coloration from his Moog, along with triggered drum machine clinks, bass drum backbeat and maracas-like friction. Before concluding with a gong resonation that would have impressed J. Arthur Rank, he snakes out a chord that is as slippery and slinky as if it was played on a Farfisa organ. “Spontaneous Simplicity” features a synthesizer tone midway between a vibraharp and a gamelan, as well as throbbing organ riffs, although most of the tune is a showcase for Ray’s twisted and bent vibrated grace notes. Even “Echoes of the World” is presented as a fantasia for Gilmore’s Tranesque – or is it actually Gilmoresque? – styling, all double-tongued and double-timed, as well as tinkling keyboard fills from Ra.

Then there’s the title tune, which fades in-and-out of aural focus as Tyson helps Ra interpolate “Space is the Place” into the theme, while Gilmore contributes double-tongued trills and Ray’s plunger work builds up to a blues tonality. Before Gilmore has finishes chewing through the tune with long-lined tone extensions and Ray aims for Cat Anderson-like stratospheric triplets, Ra elaborates separate melodies – neither particularly disco-like – from each hand. One thumps and crunches with incontinent rhythms from the Moog, while the other uses the organ’s fluttering watery grooves to make its point. Ali’s – and perhaps Gilmore’s – drumming helps to push the undulating overtones into place, but suppleness is missing with no double bass present.

Most notably, the Janus-like future-past dichotomy that was present on the earlier disc remains a sub-theme here. “When There is no Sun” includes atonal horn trills and smears, a poetic recitation by the band in toto, a brief recap of “Space is the Place”, Ra splashing and splaying polyphonic themes from both electronic keyboards, and wiggling and whooshing rocket-launching oscillations. But it ends with a Tatum-like solo piano run though of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.

The vibes – to use a 1970s word – are even more retro on “Sky Blues”. A throwback to the sort of honky-tonk riffs Ra must have internalized growing up in Alabama – recall that Avery Parish, composer of “After Hours” was a friend – this could be Ra’s rent party homage. Is he channeling Ray Bryant or is it Jimmy Yancy or Little Brother Montgomery? With the piano outlook adding a constant walking bass line to the theme development and Ali whacking a thick shuffle beat, Ra’s key ruffling provides the appropriate backdrop to Ray’s vamps and riffs plus Gilmore’s tough tenor honking that could have migrated from a David “Fathead” Newman or Don Wilkerson session.

Ra’s phantasmagoric ability to simultaneously create in the past, present and future is showcased well on both of these discs. While nothing here approaches indispensable Ra, with a mind as fertile as Ra’s – and sidemen this committed – it’s always valuable to get a new glimpse into his compositional and performance strategy. Additionally, more easily available Ra is always welcome.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Blues: 1. Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue* 2. I'll Get By 3. My Favorite Things 4. Untitled 5. Nature Boy 6. Tenderly 7. Black Magic; 8. I'll Get By+ 9. I'll Get By+

Personnel: Blues: Akh Tal Ebah (trumpet and flugelhorn); Marshall Allen and Danny Davis (alto saxophone and flute); James Jackson (flute and bassoon); Eloe Omoe (bass clarinet); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone); Sun Ra (piano or organ); Richard “Radu” Williams* or Ronnie Boykins+(bass); Luqman Ali (drums) and Atakatune (conga)

Track Listing: Disco: Disc 1: 1. Disco 3000 2. Sun of the Cosmos 3. Echos of The World 4. Geminiology 5. Sky Blues 6. Friendly Galaxy Disc 2: 1. Third Planet incl, Friendly Galaxy 2. Dance of the Cosmo Aliens 3. Spontaneous Simplicity 4. Images incl, Over The Rainbow 5. When There is no Sun 6. We Travel the Spaceways

Personnel: Disco: Michael Ray (trumpet and vocals); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone, drums and vocals); Sun Ra (piano, organ, moog synthesizer, rhythm machine and vocals); Luqman Ali (drums and vocals) and June Tyson (vocals)

May 3, 2008

The Velvet Lounge: On Late Chicago Jazz

by Gerald Majer
Columbia University Press

By Ken Waxman
October 10, 2005

A non-faction memoir of tales that may or not have happened, this volume is, to overstate the case a bit, sort of an American À la recherche du temps perdu. Gerald Majer, an English professor at Villa Julie College in Baltimore, utilizes his listening experiences involving major Chicago jazz musicians, as an entrée to his ruminations and meditations on growing up in that Midwestern city.

Don’t be fooled by the photograph of tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson on the cover or the two-page discography at the end of the volume however. Although Majer deals, in greater or lesser degrees, with the sounds of, among others, tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons, Anderson, bandleader Sun Ra, multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Art Ensemble of Chicago members Roscoe Mitchell and Malachi Favors, this is no music encyclopedia or a collection of album and CD reviews.

Instead, like Proust in recherche du temps perdu, who evolved his pioneering modern novel from the sensations and memories unleashed when he tasted a madeleine cake dipped in linden tea, similar to those he was given as a child, Majer’s tastes of modern and so-called avant-garde jazz prompt similar autobiographical and poetic musings.

Here’s his introduction to an apocryphal retelling of the circumstances surrounding Ammons’ 1962 heroin bust that can serve as an explanation of how many of the experiences outlined in the book should be taken:

“My account will only be a partial one – the version of story I heard and have remembered and imagined for many years, the story that called me to attempt to speak of another’s life...”

Link that statement to another he expresses later while detailing a 1973 Auditorium Theater performance by Sun Ra and his Arkestra:

“Behind the curtain of memory, I see that night though there were others over the years and inevitably the memories drift and fuse and overlap.”

In other words these non-faction incidents are his usually successful attempts to capture the feeling of jazz through his own emotional response to certain situations.

Thus, for example, a section involved with recalling the power of Elvin Jones’ drums he felt during a matinee show at the Jazz Showcase when he was a teenager, leads to a recollection of how he first noted Jones’ name while listening to John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things LP, the title of which he relates to the poet Arthur Rimbaud’s system of vowels. Simultaneously, Jones’ real-time exertions remind him of the dangers and excitement of playing games in a vacant lot near his childhood home, one of which was a test of kids’ endurance they called “the punching game”.

Or read how he spins his reminiscence of pianist Andrew Hill and tenor saxophonist’s John Gilmore’s work on “Le Serpent Qui Danse” on a late 1960s Hill LP into a meditation on South Side Chicago blues, Hill’s compositional links to Thelonious Monk, and – with Gilmore – to Sun Ra; as well as the composition’s link to the myth of Apollo and Python, elaborated by the metaphors of Charles Baudelaire’s poem of the same name. Finally, he uses these combined sentiments to arrive at the emotions he and his then-girlfriend experienced at a Sunday afternoon Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) big band gig in 1976.

Stylistically, many of Proust’s sentences in recherche du temps perdu extend several pages in length. Thankfully, Majer’s don’t. But his all-embracing metaphors and similes do, descriptively uncoiling a meditation, activity or idea through a few paragraphs, pages or entire chapters, only abandoning the concept when every last implication and inference has been drained from it – not unlike the way Coltrane, or come to think of it, Kirk or Sonny Stitt – both celebrated in the book – would play a solo.

Along the way, The Velvet Lounge: On Late Chicago Jazz does double duty as a celebration of the Windy city, and what Majer calls “the trite and secret motto of Chicago: to live is to work, to work is to live”. As an academic, Majer is an anomaly in his tales populated by working class muscle and fortitude, whether it’s expressed in the assembly line work of his North end Polish-American family and friends, or in the prodigious efforts of Black musicians from the South Side to band together into the AACM – and he proudly ticks off the collection of blue-collar jobs he had as well.

Majer doesn’t just poetically rhapsodize about the street and trees and buildings of Chicago, but celebrates its street markets, book stores and libraries plus its roads and highways, ground level transit and elevated and underground trains. These modes of transportation and services available to all were also inspirations to composers like Ra, who created compositions like “Magic City” and “El, the Sound of Joy” from those experiences.

Although Majer touches on similar live shows elsewhere, a performance at Anderson’s Velvet Lounge justly deserves its place of prominence. That’s because the author’s 18-page portrayal of an evening he and his wife spent listening to tenor saxophonist Ari Brown’s trio – and a sitter-in – at that down-at the-heels music shrine – interrupted, as expected, with numerous conceptual memory excursions – is probably the single most arresting recounting of the improvisational experience you’ll ever read in print.

Mixing in a tribute to a late rock musician friend who was buoyed by how the Lounge was a space “to keep the music alive, uncompromising and uncompromised”, Majer sketches the circumstances of how a routine Wednesday night gig at the Lounge in the middle of August – cover charge five dollars – changed in an instant to “music that doesn’t level off … but instead exposes its instant of creation”.

The dramatis personae, besides Brown on sax and electric keyboards are bassist Favors, drummer Avreeayl Ra, and a sitter-in on tenor saxophone named only Paul. A Lounge regular, who at one point worked for the Chicago Transit Authority, Paul’s command of saxophone improvisation is perhaps made more mythically transcendental by the author’s prose. Using this figurative language allows Majer to imaginatively capture the sensation of exhilaration and release that top-flight improvisation involves.

For instance, after he suddenly grasps that he’s been unconsciously mesmerized by the music for an extended period, Majer writes:

“I want everyone to be there, the living and the dead, I want to record this moment for posterity though its power must be precisely in its coming and its passing without any possibility of saving it … I let out a shout. I can’t help it …”

And later on, writing in the third person about audience reaction in general:

“A sound leaped out of you that was all yours and that wasn’t yours at all. You yelled for joy.”

It’s this sort of writing which is the volume’s strength, but which makes it so difficult to slot into any category. The author is a sophisticated enough writer so that even when he goes on metaphoric flights, his descriptions actually make you want to hear again – or listen to for the first time – the music described. Still, the elegiac first-person details of his upbringing and coming of age may not strike a resonating chord in every reader, unless he or she revels in quirky details about the United States’ Second City and its local characters.

In short, like improvised music itself, the audience for this book may be small, but fervent. As Majer writes about jazz, but perhaps describing his books as well: “following its track might mean not so much loving jazz but loving the interval that it opens…”

In reality no more challenging a read than “late Chicago jazz” is a listen, The Velvet Lounge: On Late Chicago Jazz deserves to achieve eventual reception and respect not too dissimilar from what the music itself has earned.

October 10, 2005

Hallwalls' New Home

For CODA

A unique arrangement between an American folk-punk singer-songwriter and a longtime bastion of experimental arts means that Western New York’s centre for creative music will have a new, architecturally impressive home in downtown Buffalo by October, 2005.

Hallwalls, a nonprofit arts organization, which for more than 30 years has been the place where innovative art, film and music – especially non-mainstream jazz – has been presented, moves into the expanded first-floor and basement-level facilities in a historically preserved church as a tenant of Righteous Babe Records (RBR). RBR is the folk-punk mini conglomerate that has grown out of the successful career of singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco, a Buffalo native, will have its offices on the second floor.

The new facility’s projected opening was pushed back for a few months last year when a combination of planning and political hassles, since resolved, caused work that began in July 2003, on the historic, formerly dilapidated Asbury Delaware church to be put on hold. Work steamed ahead again in late March of this year. However, Hallwalls vacated its former premises in mid-2004 and since then has presented programs in a variety of ad-hoc locations, which for jazz has included small clubs and larger art galleries.

But the wait will be worth it, says Edmund Cardoni, Hallwalls’ executive director. The almost $10 million (U.S.) RBR is pouring into the building adds state-of-the-art energy efficient facilities such as a geothermal heating and cooling system; underground power lines; and a custom-designed elevator lifted by hydraulic systems housed below the basement floor. A specially designed glass, steel, and copper stair-tower addition will be the main entrance for both Hallwalls and RBR’s offices. Care has also been taken so that these necessary improvements don’t disturb the restored façade of the building listed on the National Register of Historic Landmarks.

As an added bonus, three concert spaces of various sizes, including a venue with a maximum capacity of 1,200, will be available. “The seating will be flexible, not fixed,” explains Cardoni. “The floor will be open, for sitting in seats, standing, dancing, sitting at tables, whatever the event needs.” Over the years Hallwalls’ has drawn audiences of several hundreds to see bands ranging from Peter Brötzmann’s Tentet and the Sun Ra Arkestra, as well as smaller crowds for bands by multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee and saxophonist Charles Gayle, to mention two. “We believe the sky's the limit at the church, with no dilution of quality or dulling of edge.” he adds. “We can expand the audience for the music we love to a degree not possible at the former location or by wandering around from space to space like gypsies.”

Hallwalls’ relocation costs of $425,000 (U.S.) are covered by a successful capital campaign, with 86% from individual and corporate donations plus local and national foundation grants. An addition 14% came from New York state, mostly in the form of a Capital Aid grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.

-- Ken Waxman

July 1, 2005

SUN RA

Spaceship Lullaby: The Vocal Groups: Chicago 1954-60
Atavistic Unheard Music Series UMS243CD

Undoubtedly one of the most -- if not the most -- bizarre items in the massive Sun Ra discography, this CD showcases the pianist and infrequently members of his Arkestra backing up three pro-am Chicago vocal groups.

While there’s some grotesque fascination in listening to some of the 37 [!] songs the three sets of singers -- the Nu Sounds, the Lintels and the Cosmic Rays -- perform, you have to realize that many of the 74 plus minutes of music are merely of rehearsal tape quality. Plus true appreciation of the results must come with a certain tolerance for schmaltz. Before he took his band and cosmic visions to New York and later Philadelphia, Sun Ra was very much part of Black show biz in the Windy City. Thus much of the singing is given over to a cross section of pre-rock’n’roll standards and originals, some as cringe-inducing as “A Perfume Counter (in Paris)” and “The Wooden Soldier & The China Doll”, both sung by the Lintels.

Don’t expect soulful blues, refined jazz arrangements or Africanized space chants either. The three all-male vocal groups were aiming their efforts at the general public and depending on the year and the vocalists, the style emulated ranges from late Ink Spots-Mills Brothers to the first stirring of doo-wop. The former tunes feature a burbling bass singer and a semi-conversational tenor lead; the later street corner harmonies, teen angst lyrics and closely-voiced harmonies where “cha cha cha” are the most common backing syllables.

There are some highpoints, however. “Chicago USA”, sung by the Nu Sounds, was Ra’s entry in a contest to write new theme song for that city. Especially on the second run through, you can hear glimmerings of what, with a bit more seasoning, could have been a major city song like “New York’s My Home” or “Do You Know What It Means?” When the pianist’s flat handed expanse replicates the sound of waves splashing off the shore of Lake Michigan, veteran drummer Robert Barry gooses the beat with his cowbell and Pat Patrick’s baritone saxophone becomes the sound of the EL the association with Ra’s later work is strong as well.

You can even speculate why this ditty, that asserted that “no place on this earth compares to this Midwest paradise”, didn’t win the prize. Maybe Chicago already has too many anthems? Citizens of less musically favored places such as San Diego, Boston or Toronto wouldn’t mind a catchy number like this associated with their burg.

Although most of Ra’s later preoccupations were kept to a minimum in the days reflected o this CD, the lyrics and sentiments of the title tune could easily have fit in with the Arkestra in its salad days with June Tyson rather than the Cosmic Rays singing.

Powerful Patrick bari work and rattling, stuttering drum beats from Barry and timpanist Jim Herdon give the Cosmic Ray’s version of “Africa” some musical testosterone, while Marshall Allen’s flute and the riffing of the Arkestra reed section behind the bass singer give “Black Sky & Blue Moon” added heft.

That song and “Honey” are also performed by the Nu Sounds with only Ra and Barry accompanying them. However beefed-up instrumental backing and perhaps the passing of a couple of years make the Cosmic Rays’ version superior.

First time through, the arrangements seem to give collateral sophistication to nonsense syllables chanted by the back-up singers. Dual hand drumming and a unison vamp from Allen, Patrick, alto saxist James Spaulding and John Gilmore on tenor saxophone enliven the over-four minute second version. But the overall sonic picture is a lot muddier, as if the primitive tape machine was destabilized and couldn’t record all the sounds created by the singers’ close harmonies and the augmented instrumentation.

Other than all this, there’s a certain fascination in eavesdropping on Ra at the piano singing along and taking the raw singers -- especially the unknown members of the Lintels -- through their paces as he tries to shape something resembling professional harmonies from the groups. It’s also instructive to hear how the Mills Brothers harmonies and Mario Lanza pseudo operatic tenor lead of the Nu Sounds are supplanted by the Lintels’ rawer street corner tones which presage falsetto singers like Frankie Valli, when the Cosmic Rays’ lead singer heads into counter-tenor range.

Without the other instruments Barry and Ra stick to shuffle rhythms and cocktail piano accompaniment. You see why when Ra tries to teach the Nu Sound an original arrangement of his favorite “St. Louis Blues”, a tonal clash between his southern blues styling and their incipient northern doowooping is palpable.

Sun Ra completists will have to have this album and it may also interest those with a quirky fondness for offbeat singing. Others should approach it with caution, even if they’re familiar with other parts of the Ra legacy.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Spaceship Lullaby 2. Stranger in Paradise 3. Just one of those things 4. Honky Tonk 5. Haunted Heart 6. Evelyn 7. Honeysuckle Rose 8. Honey 9. Black Sky & Blue Moon 10. Ra coaching Roland Williams 11. Holiday for Strings (Ra dynamics demo) 12. Holiday for Strings 13. I Fall Asleep Counting my Blessings 14. Nice work If You Can Get It 15. Somebody Loves Me 16. Chicago USA 17. Chicago USA* 18. C’est Si Bon 19. Blue Moon 20. Baby Please Be Mine 21. Blue Skies 22. My Only Love 23. A Foggy Day 24. A Perfume Counter 25. Love Is… 26. Wordless Piece 27. I Was Wrong 28. Louise 29. St. Louis Blues 30. The Wooden Soldier & The China Doll 31. Africa 32. Somebody’s In Love 33. Bye Bye 34. Black Sky & Blue Moon 35. Honey 36. Honey 37.

Come Rain or Come Shine

Personnel: [Track 1-17, 23-30] Pat Patrick (baritone saxophone)*; Sun Ra (piano); Robert Barry (drums); The Nu Sounds: Roland Williams, John, Kalil (vocals); [Tracks 18-22] Ra, The Lintels: singers unknown (vocals); [Tracks 31-37] E.J. Turner (trumpet); Marshall Allen (alto saxophone and flute); James Spaulding (alto saxophone); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone); Pat Patrick (baritone saxophone); Sun Ra, piano, (Wurlitzer electric piano); Bebop Sam Thomas (guitar); Ronnie Boykins (bass); Robert Barry (drums); Jim Herdon (tympani); The Cosmic Rays: Calvin Barron, Matt Swift, Lonnie Tobert and one unknown (vocals)

March 8, 2004

SUN RA

Solo Piano Recital - Teatro La Fenice, Venezia
Golden Years of New Jazz GY 21

This is the hippest solo piano CD you’re ever going to hear that features “Take the A Train”, St Louis Blues” and “Honeysuckle Rose”.

That’s because the artist involved isn’t some wannabe Young Lion aiming for mainstream cred or a palsied Trad Jazz survivor nostalgically re-creating the sounds of his youth. Instead the hoary jazz standards are slotted in among certified Saturnian melodies and improvisations by a figure who during his time on earth seemed to be part of all strands of improvised music: Le Sony’r Ra, known familiarly as Sun Ra (1914-1993).

Recorded live in Venice in 1977, these rare solo performances find Ra revisiting all facets of his career. While the Art Ensemble of Chicago coined the aphorism “Great Black Music: Ancient to Future”, that slogan could as easily fit Ra’s work, as could the title of a Robert Dick CD from the late 1990s: JAZZ STANDARDS ON MARS.

With Ra there was never the divide between entertainment and seriousness that marks the performances of younger, more self-conscious tone scientists, a term he preferred to musicians. Thus when he plays a simple blues he brings more dissonance to his left handed feints then you usually associate with the traditional sounds. When he performs his own “Angel Race”, he begins by singing variations on the outer space theme. As he continues playing, he works in some “I Got Rhythm” variations, showcases an allegro Afro-Cuban interlude and quotes passages from others of his compositions. In the same way “Love In Outer Space” is treated orchestrally and is lightly syncopated, with tinkling right hand tremolos meeting the theme advanced with his left hand.

This is precisely the way pre-war stylists like Earl Hines treated piano showcases like his “Boogie Woogie on St. Louis Blues”, which has its echoes in Ra’s version of the piece, complete with strummed octaves and subterranean rumbles in left hand as the right picks out the sprightly melody. As a young pianist first in Birmingham, then Chicago, Ra (then Sonny Blount) must have heard and admired Hines’ work. It’s known he was strongly influenced by Fletcher Henderson, who first employed him. His version of “Penthouse Serenade” here, which becomes a honky-tonk showcase with pumping piano chords and effervescent voicing, is probably similar to the sort of tunes he’d come up with for dance rehearsals, when he was working for Henderson in Chicago’s Club DeLisa in the 1940s.

In other spots, Ra uses pedal pressure to vibrate the 32 bass strings for extra oscillations and recasts a familiar pre-war melody with strong upbeats, chordal downbeats, flashing cascading chords and sharp key clips. At one point he in all seriousness invite audience members to join him at a party in Jupiter sometime in the future. Reflecting the title without dispute, this CD is a valuable and rare piano recital.

For Ra, myth-making and music-making were one and the same. So those who will gain the most listening to this and other Ra sessions know to accept him on his own terms.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Free Improvisation 2. Blues 3. Love In Outer Space 4. Outer Spaceways Inc. 5. Take the “A” Train 6. St Louis Blues 7. Penthouse Serenade 8. Angel Race 9. Free Improvisation 10. Honeysuckle Rose 11. Friendly Galaxy/Spontaneous Simplicity

Personnel: Sun Ra (piano)

December 15, 2003

SUN RA

Music From Tomorrow's World
Atavistic Unheard Music UMS/ALP 237CD

Analogous to hearing Count Basie's band at Kansas City's Reno Club in 1935 or Charlie Parker's legendary stand at New York's Famous Door in 1953 with Thelonious Monk on piano, these newly unearthed tapes offer 17 Chicago performances from 1960 by Sun Ra's then tiny Arkestra.

Their fascination lies more in what the Arkestra isn't then what it is. Not yet the familiar, well-organized band of a dozen musicians plus, instead these tracks feature both a sextet and an octet, working through -- sometimes for the first time -- newly recorded or soon to be taped Ra compositions. Some of the tunes would become Arkestra classics; some would never be recorded or heard again. Additionally, since the first seven selections were taped at Ra's regular gig at the Wonder Inn at Cottage Grove and 75th on Chicago's South Side, you get to hear how the band functioned in a non-listening room circumstance. Mixing familiar show tunes, light classics, jazz syncopation and Ra inventions, the band showed that schtick and showmanship were upfront more than 40 years ago.

To go with the outer space tunes and extraterrestrial references, Ra & Co. were already wearing space togs, as the booklet pictures show. Interestingly enough, however, since he then had a full head of hair, Ra's distinctive headgear is missing.

In this period of consolidation some of the longtime Arkestra heavy hitters such as alto saxophonist/flutist Marshall Allen, tenor saxophonist John Gilmore and bassist Ronnie Boykins were already on board. Other important contributors, who show up on the Majestic Hall recording session, include cornettist Phil Cohran and drummer Robert Barry, who stayed behind when the Arkestra left Chicago, but who helped introduce Ra's ideas of self-sufficiency when the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians was formed later in the decade. Impressive baritone sax man Ronald Wilson would rejoin the band again in the 1980s.

While the arrangements and solo spots are as convincing as they were to remain for the next few decades, each of the sections has some drawbacks. The tape recorder in the Wonder Inn seemed to have been placed closer to the crowd than the Arkestra. That means during some of the selections, cross talk, cash registers, off beat hand claps and a very persistent, probably-inebriated woman's commentary can be heard, sometimes louder than flute or bass solos. She may be enthusiastic all right, but hearing "Play it Sun Ray (sic), play it for me ..." more than once is a bit distracting. Furthermore, in concession to the location, crooner Ricky Murray joins the band for two Gershwin tunes that he manhandles in sort of ycelpt Billy Eckstine style.

Still, Allen ethereal flute work and angular alto solos are already distinctively individual, Ra is discovering hitherto unknown uses for the electric piano in the arrangements and the group is obviously in sync. For example a unison recitation of Ra's "Imagination" -- "If we came from nowhere here/Why can't we go somewhere there?" easily launches into a killer rendition of, appropriately, "How High the Moon".

All instrumental, the 10 Majestic Hall sessions are also not very well recorded. This is most noticeable on "Majestic 4" when after a powerful Wilson baritone romp and solid understated Boykins four-string excursion, the massed horns re-enter with harsh vamps that sound if they leaked in from a different studio session.

Besides highlighting some Ra numbers with unfamiliar or unknown titles, this part of the disc shows how having the auxiliary shapes and colors available with an octet allows the leader to daub that much more on his musical canvas. Cohran's high-pitched cornet gives the band a new top line, while Barry's inventive percussion often creates the roughs that link solos to one another. Not only that, but his frequent use of claves and other Afro-Cuban percussion also presages certain non-American heartland themes Ra would try out in later years.

Ra collectors will snap up this session as well they should, as will others interested in hearing how the composer's work developed over the years. However, despite containing some familiar classics this is definitely not a first purchase if you've never heard the Arkestra before. Investigate some of the bands earlier and later studio sessions, then when you understand how the band sounded at its zenith, you can come back and hear how it evolved from its Chicago roots.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Live at The Wonder Inn: 1. Angels & demons at play 2. Spontaneous simplicity 3. Space aura 4. S'wonderful 5. It ain't necessarily so 6. How high the moon 7. China gate The Majestic Hall session 8. Majestic 1 9. Ankhnaton 10. Possession 11. Tapestry from an asteroid 12. Majestic 2 13. Majestic 3 14. Majestic 4 15. Velvet 16. A call for all demons 17. Interstellar Lo-ways (introduction)

Personnel: [Tracks 1-7]: George Hudson (trumpet); Marshall Allen (alto saxophone, flute); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone); Sun Ra (piano, electric piano, percussion); Ronnie Boykins (bass); Jon L. Hardy (drums); Ricky Murray (vocals). [Tracks 8-17]: Phil Cohran (cornet); Gene Easton (alto saxophone); Marshall Allen (alto saxophone, flute); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone); Ronald Wilson (baritone saxophone); Sun Ra (piano); Ronnie Boykins (bass); Robert Barry (drums)

December 30, 2002

LANDING ON THE WRONG NOTE

By Ajay Heble
Routledge

The most recent schism inside the warring Baltic states that make up the landscape of much of present-day jazz, involves the neo-conservatives verses the experimenters.

Neo-cons, characterized by their champion, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, insist that the music must follow a set of rules and regulations that includes a background in the blues and the necessity of swinging every time a musician plays. Experimenters, among which can be found some of the readers of this magazine, are less doctrinaire. Their playing and compositions welcome other influences, and they aren’t obsessed with producing the “correct” note every time.

As you can tell by his title, Ajay Heble, an associate professor at Ontario’s University of Guelph as well as the founder and artistic director of the highly praised annual Guelph Jazz Festival, falls on the later side of the equation. But the existence of his book pinpoints another conundrum that must be faced now that the music has finally been deemed legitimate by the populace at large. Academics have set their sights on jazz as a proper field of study, so much so that many volumes of theory and critical compendia are crowding jazz histories, biographies and musical analysis on library and bookstore shelves

In his book, Heble is conscious of some of the problems inherent in trying to graft highly complex academic theory onto what is essentially a non-linear, mostly non-verbal music, which is above all concerned with the expression of feelings and emotions. That he often succeeds in melding the two within this tome confirms his skill; that some of the points are submerged beneath the murky waters of specific academic jargon reveals the problems inherent in this approach.

In many ways, the writing in the book resembles the streets of Manhattan. Wander too far away from your beginning point on most New York streets or avenues and you’ll end up in a completely different neighborhood. It’s the same way with the prose here. For instance, a perfectly lucid -- for the layperson -- description of the talents or methods of a certain musician or a key recording will suddenly turn a metaphoric corner and become lost in a thicket of academic prose. Alternately, an obtuse statement or theory buttressed by a snowfall of dense, numbered references and specific conceptual words and phrases whose meaning is buried in the cement of research paper foundations, will unexpectedly appears transparent when a real life example is introduced.

From the beginning, Heble states that “(l)anding on the wrong note … can be a politically and culturally salient act for oppressed groups seeking alternative models of knowledge production and identity formation”. He works to implement his thesis in specific chapters dedicated to such important artists as the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra, John Zorn and Charles Gayle, plus discusses the topics of women in jazz, understanding the autobiographies of several important jazz figures, and jazz’s interaction with popular, mainstream culture. Perhaps it’s too large a banquet to try to consume at one sitting.

Although he writes a couple of times that in retrospect he regrets not having personally interviewed different musicians while researching the book, his suppositions and conclusions rely on secondary sources. Additionally, he often attempts to have jazz and its practitioners conform to the philosophies of prominent academics such as Jacques Attali, Theodor Adorno and Edward Said, even if they never examined the music itself, or in Adorno’s case were openly hostile to it. Just as one performer’s musical parody can be taken as a heartfelt tribute by another, so some of Heble’s conclusions can occasionally be seen as too pat or certain.

When the prose can be deconstructed that is. Words such as “adumbrating”, “intentionalist, “fixity” and “situatedness” -- to take a few at random -- stud his writing the way flatted fifths define bebop solos. None of these words are part of the average non-academic’s vocabulary, and there are times when even having a standard collegiate dictionary by your elbow won’t illuminate some of the points or sentences. Heble also indulges in the academic affectation of referring to LPs and CDs as well as books and articles as “texts”.

That’s why the most illuminating parts of the book involve performers like Gayle, who Heble has seen play, or Heble’s experience in trying to balance popularity and innovation when booking acts for the Guelph Jazz Festival.

Bringing the experience from his day job as an English professor to this thesis, he’s most convincing -- if contentious -- when doing a textural analysis of the autobiographies of Charles Mingus, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. Insisting that “it would be foolish to simply take what [musicians] say at face value” he relates the so-called truth in fiction expressed in these biographies to improvisers “discovering rewarding sonic possibilities in what … might have been deemed ‘mistakes’ or ‘wrong notes’.”

However, when he posits that Ellington deliberately not mentioning social and racial problems in his autobiography is “best understood through an analysis of the text’s absences”, he seems to be deliberately ignoring the score in front of him. This interpretation of deliberate absence can be especially disputatious since all three cited volumes were either ghost written or heavily edited.

Moreover, wrenching incidents, performances and/or compositions from their historical contexts to make a point doesn’t make a theoretical supposition any more correct than an already accepted interpretation. For example, in dealing with a later, very accessible CD recorded by the Art Ensemble, he seems to tie himself into theoretical knots trying to see it as expressing political dissonance even as it while reaches out to a larger audience.

Another overall deficiency of the book is that despite his real life experience with the Guelph Jazz Festival, Heble has written a volume that deals with avant-jazz as it was, not as it is now. By relating most of his examples and theories to how atonal, improvised music grew out of, and was accepted or not by the African American community, he seems to have not taken into account the fact that 21st century jazz or improvised music is more universal.

Europeans and North Americans of all backgrounds now play a prominent role is so-called left-field jazz, a situation that his Festival has acknowledged in its bookings. Furthermore many neo-trad performers who today follow the lead of Marsalis are Black musicians proud of their background. This disconnects the link between Black consciousness and performers of “wrong notes” or avant-sounds, which appears to be taken for granted by many writers and in places within this book.

With the depth of scholarship and musical smarts Heble has displayed in Landing on the Wrong Note, the hope is that he will create another volume that will try to resolve some of these contradictions. When that happens, if, he doesn’t see it as a sell-out to the popularizers, perhaps he could also use a little more reader-friendly prose.

-- Ken Waxman

December 18, 2001

SUN RA

The Great Lost Sun Ra Albums: Cymbals and Crystal Spears
Evidence ECD 22217-2

SUN RA
When Angels Speak of Love
Evidence ECD 22216-2

SUN RA
Pathways to Unknown Worlds/Friendly Love
Evidence ECD 22218-2

SUN RA
Lanquidity
Evidence ECD 22220-2

SUN RA
Greatest Hits: Easy Listening for Intergalactic Travel
Evidence ECD 22219-2

Visionary, throwback, shaman, naïf, scholar, student, tyrant, freedom fighter, traditionalist, futurist: Sun Ra was all that and more. Jazz's first space age avant gardist and synthesizer pioneer, he was also the last of the big band leaders.

A native of Birmingham, Ala., he preached about African Americans' Egyptian past, while also proclaiming himself a visitor from the planet Saturn. Someone, who in the 1950s created -- El Saturn -- Jazz's longest-lasting artist-run label to maintain control of his product, he confounded business people by distributing small numbers of unlabelled LPs with homemade covers. His band, the Arkestra, never followed fad or fashion, and played exceptionally the simplest sing-along chants, note perfect renditions of 1920s classics or the most eccentric atonal music without missing a note, often during the same performance and sometimes within the same composition.

Ra's enigmatic pronouncements and his band's colorful, homemade costumes may have confused many during his lifetime (1914-1993). Yet during the past dozen years as more and more of his LPs have appeared on CD, the length, breath and depth of his work has become more apparent. Unified and ever surprising, the Ra legacy can easily be compared to that left behind by other prescient composers such as Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington.

Official disseminator of Ra's most important work, Evidence has recently come out with five new Arkestra CDs, both reissues and recently discovered music. Like the man himself, these uniformly excellent CDs seemingly offer something for everyone. For the freebop fanciers, there's WHEN ANGELS SPEAK OF LOVE; for the groove-oriented, LANQUIDITY; for long-time followers and sophisticated explorers, THE GREAT LOST SUN RA ALBUMS: CYMBALS AND CRYSTAL SPEARS and PATHWAYS TO UNKNOWN WORLDS/FRIENDLY LOVE. And for those looking for a whiz-bang introduction to the Ra universe, there's GREATIST HITS: EASY LISTENING FOR INTERGALACTIC TRAVEL.

Perhaps the jazz equivalent of the finding of a couple of the Dead Sea scrolls, THE GREAT LOST ALBUMS is the archeological discovery of this set. Recorded by the mature Arkestra in 1973 and planned for release as part of the band's abortive Impulse! contract, the two sessions are as different as night an day, or perhaps Birmingham and Cairo.

For a start, CYMBALS, recorded with only an octet, is a dynamite blues album. With tunes like "Thoughts Under A Dark Blue Light" and "The Order of the Pharaonic Jesters" as greasy and down home as anything Sunny's neighbors in Philadelphia's Germantown could have heard in a local dive, the otherworldliness comes in the solos and choice of instruments. Sure there are soul-styled organ riffs, but Ra plays an early electric keyboard, the Rocksichord -- on vibes setting no less -- along with the Hammond B3. Moreover, the keening saxophone melisma spit out into the tunes by the tenor saxophone of John Gilmore -- Ra's right-hand man -- goes far beyond anything imagined by other Chicago soul brothers like Gene Ammons or Johnny Griffin.

Although underrepresented figures such as bass clarinetist Eloe Omoe, alto saxophonist Danny Davis and trumpeter Akh Tal Ebah get their share of solo space, the entire disc could be dubbed a tribute to the Arkestra's bassist, Ronnie Boykins. Whether bonding the horns and percussion with a relentless beat, or unlimbering his sophisticated bow work, the mercurial Boykins was in many ways the glue that held the band together.

His talent was such, in fact that when he had a falling out with Ra and left the band, the keyboardist sometimes preferred to record without a bassman -- as the band did on CRYSTALS -- than try to replace Boykins' four strings.

That disc is something else again. With the band 12 members strong, four full time percussionists on board and Ra moving from organ to marimba to mini-Moog to electronic vibes to Rocksichord, the session is perversely both more electronic and more acoustic than CYMBALS. For instance Marshall Allen's oboe and Omoe's bass clarinet get a workout on "The Embassy of the Living God", made all the more prominent when framed by the cybernetic soundscape around them. Additionally -- although no one would confuse Ra's organ runs with those of Jimmy Smith's -- because Swing and R&B grow from the same root, the sort of easy-going shuffle rhythm that Sunny probably internalized from his work with Fletcher Henderson is never far from the surface here.

Longest track -- at 20 minutes plus -- and another Gilmore tour-de-force is "Sunrise in the Western Sky". Standing tall like a armed warrior in a jungle clearing, underscored by massed percussion and the occasional keyboard interjection, the saxophonist practices some aural karate, wrenching as many tones from his instrument as there are colors in the sunrise. Had this track been released when scheduled (1973), it may have been seen as Gilmore's own "The Freedom Suite" or "Chasin' The Trane".

Released in 1966, ANGELS fits squarely into the New Thing. However it had actually been recorded with a tentet three years earlier, and showed that Ra's avant garde conception was already as much a part of his work as Bebop or Swing.

Notable for Thomas "Bugs" Hunter's early reverb recording technique, which would remain a feature of Arkestra sessions for years to come, the strategy was actually more Saturnian serendipity. Like the fuzztone created by a broken amplifier on an early Rock'n'Roll tune, "Rocket 88", Ra's joyful adoption of Hunter mistakenly connecting a tape recorder's output to its input gave the band an inimitable sound that couldn't be replicated by the most up-to-date studio equipment.

As always, percussion and percussive sounds lurk everywhere, especially on tracks like "Ecstasy of Being". But some of the needed tension comes with the contrast between trumpeter Walter Miller's more conventional Bop and Swing ideas and Gilmore and Allen's outwardly-directed -- or is it heavenly? -- work. Ra prolongs this musical schizophrenia as well, trotting out his Clavioline, but also contributing bluesy piano fills to the Boppish "The Idea of It All" and some dark, subterranean piano chords to "Next Stop Mars". Another Ra "hit", that track begins with the standard outer-space vocal chant, then opens up enough to give the horns -- especially Gilmore exposing his most paint-scraping tenor tone -- ample flight space. Even Miller gets into the act with some echoing tones that would appear more commonplace in the late 1990s then the early 1960s.

Initially recorded in quadraphonic sound and barely released by Impulse! PATHWAYS and the newly discovered FRIENDLY, are in contrast, cued or guided improvisations. The most abstract of this collection of discs, many of the tracks are light on drumbeats and seem to be pieced together from sounds produced by the sidemen. As a matter of fact, someone not knowing the circumstances might be persuaded to hear them as so-called "classical" New Music.

Throughout PATHWAYS, Ra shows off two keyboard sounds, frequently on the same tune. On "Cosmo-Media," for instance, each of the keyboard conceptions makes an appearance bookending Glimore's lung-shredding falsetto tenor solo. Synthesizer and electronic vibes produce the sci-fi flick-style blats and bleeps, while the organ cushions the background with a steady melody line.

Adding to this emphasis on pure sound rather than composition or harmony, other Ra stalwarts such as bassist Boykins, Allen -- concentrating on oboe on the title track and "Extension Out" -- and Omoe -- using his overblown bass clarinet to battle concentrated percussion on the same tune -- make appearances, but just that. Presented as contributing to the overall texture of the tunes, rather than being showcased as "jazz" soloists, this forces the listener to view the entire disc as program music.

A rare artifact, FRIENDLY, is more of the same, but with Boykins AWOL and the beat carried by Atakatune's conga drums. Slightly muddy, as if it was recorded at a rehearsal -- a frequent Ra strategy -- the supposed four-part suite, moves along courtesy of horror movie style organ chords and some of Hadi's stronger brass work. If the suite is especially notable, it's because of the one-time appearance and use of such Arkestra-titled instruments as the space dimension mellophone and Neptunian libflecto. The latter is described as "a bassoon that has suffered a hostile takeover", with its double reed apparatus cunningly replaced by a single mouthpiece.

Since this CD is built around an outer space conception and the production of uncommon sonic timbres, none of these unique instruments is prominent the way they would be in a more conventional environment. But this matter-of-factly acceptance of the unusual is what defined the Arkestra as the band it was -- and is.

LANQUIDITY is a different matter all together. Recorded in 1978, it could be called the Arkestra's "disco album" or perhaps its extended dance mix. Granted those two descriptions are a bit exaggerated and there's no way you'd ever see Sun Ra legs splayed on the dance floor wearing a polyester white suit. Nevertheless, he was no stranger to spinning, light-refracting disco balls and the band members were wearing glittery costumes on stage long before LaBelle or David Bowie.

Despite the heavy beat propelled by two guitarists, three percussionists and what sounds like an electric bass on "Where Pathways Meet" and "That's How I Feel", the most interesting facet of the CD was how Ra adapted new electronic keyboards to his own ends. When you hear 1970s Fusion favorites the Arp or the Fender Rhodes peeping out from within the throbbing big beat, it doesn't appear that there's a Herbie Hancock clone pushing out expected licks. Instead you hear the mature conception of someone who had begun using electronics his own way when Hancock was still a Chicago schoolboy.

Furthermore, while these foot-tappers cause soloists John Gilmore and (probably) Danny Thompson to unveil their R&B togs under their spangled Arkestra caps, Ra perversely pairs Marshall Allen's oboe with the bulked up rhythm section on the title track and elsewhere. Even the trumpeters are most likely to turn out muted asides than full-blown Kool-and-the-Gang flourishes. Plus the only advantage Ra took of one of the band's first excursions into a 24-track studio was to overdub tapes to build up the finished product in even more complicated -- though aurally transparent -- manner than he usually did.

Betraying ever rule of then fashionable funk-jazz, the only human voices heard appear on the CD's last track, in a signature Ra chant, rife with whispered melodies and inaudible asides, except for repetition of the title words by June Tyson, Ra's designated diva. Echoing flutes, an oboe motif, muted trumpets and a steady exploration of the piano's bass notes confirms that this isn't Studio 54, but outer space.

Finally there's GREATEST HITS. A misnomer, of course, since nothing the Arkestra ever recorded every made it into the Top 100, let alone the Top 10. Still, there were compositions that remained in its book year after year and were played at nearly every gig. This disc contains 18 examples of these "hits", each one of which is also available on other Evidence CDs.

Showcasing a clutch of the band's best soloists, the tunes range from early big band explorations like "Saturn" and "Kingdom of Not"; to inimitable orchestral chants such as "We Travel The Spaceways" and "Rocket Number Nine"; and include standards such as "'Round Midnight" and "I Loves You Porgy"; plus more experimental numbers like "Thither and Yon" and "Yucatan". There are even rare examples of Ra playing solo piano or with just a rhythm section.

The perfect entry into the Ra universe, this CD will probably lead potential converts to explore many of the other sessions by the Man from Saturn.

-- Ken Waxman

Lost: Cymbals: Track Listing: 1. The World of the Invisible 2. Thoughts Under A Dark Blue Light 3. The Order of the Pharaonic Jesters 4. The Mystery of Two 5. Land of the Day Star Personnel: Akh Tal Ebah (trumpet); Danny Davis (alto saxophone); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone); Eloe Omoe (bass clarinet); Sun Ra (electronic vibes, Rocksichord); Ronnie Boykins (bass); Harry Richards (drums); Derek Morris (conga) Lost: Crystal: Track Listing: 1. Crystal Spears 2. The Eternal Sphynx 3. The Embassy of the Living God 4. Sunrise in the Western Sky Personnel: Akh Tal Ebah, Kwame Hadi (trumpet, percussion); Marshall Allen (alto saxophone, oboe, flute, piccolo); Danny Davis (alto saxophone, flute, percussion); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone); Danny Ray Thompson (baritone saxophone, bongos); Eloe Omoe (bass clarinet, percussion); Sun Ra (organ, marimba, mini-Moog, electronic vibes, Rocksichord, gong); Clifford Jarvis (drums); Atakatune, Odun (congas); Eugene Brennan (percussion)

Angels: Track Listing: 1. Celestial fantasy 2. The Idea of It All 3. Ecstasy of Being 4. When Angels Speak of love 5. Next Stop Mars

Personnel: Walter Miller (trumpet); Marshall Allen (alto saxophone, oboe, percussion); Danny Davis (alto saxophone, percussion); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone, percussion); Pat Patrick (baritone saxophone, percussion); Robert Cummings (bass clarinet); Sun Ra (piano, Clavioline, gong); Ronnie Boykins (bass); Clifford Jarvis (drums); Thomas "Bugs" Hunter (drums, reverb)

Pathways: Track Listing: 1. Pathways to Unknown World 2. Untitled 3. Extension Out 4. Cosmo-Media Personnel: Kwame Hadi (trumpet, percussion); Akh Tal Ebah (mellophone, space dimension mellophone, percussion); Marshall Allen (alto saxophone, oboe); Danny Davis (alto saxophone); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone, timbales); Danny Ray Thompson (baritone saxophone, bongos); Eloe Omoe (bass clarinet, percussion); Sun Ra (organ, mini-Moog, electronic vibes, Rocksichord, gong); Ronnie Boykins (bass); Clifford Jarvis (drums); Atakatune (congas); James Jacson (Ancient Egyptian Infinity drum) Friendly Love: Track Listing: 1. Friendly Love I 2. Friendly Love II 3. Friendly Love III 4. Friendly Love IV Personnel: Kwame Hadi (trumpet, congas); Akh Tal Ebah (flugelhorn, mellophone, space dimension mellophone, percussion); Marshall Allen (oboe); Danny Davis (alto saxophone); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone); Danny Ray Thompson (baritone saxophone, Neptunian libflecto); Eloe Omoe (contra-alto-clarinet, bass clarinet); Sun Ra (organ, mini-Moog); possibly Harry Richards (drums); Atakatune (congas);

Lanquidity: Track Listing: 1. Lanquidity 2. Where Pathways Meet 3. That's How I Feel 4. Twin Stars of Thence 5. There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of) Personnel: Michael Ray, Eddie Gale (trumpet); Marshall Allen (alto saxophone, oboe, flute); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone); Danny Thompson (baritone saxophone, flute); Julian Pressley (baritone saxophone); James Jacson (bassoon, flute, oboe); Eloe Omoe (bass clarinet, flute); Sun Ra (Arp, Fender Rhodes, Yamaha organ, Hammond B3 Organ, mini-Moog, piano, orchestral bells, Crumar electronic keyboard); Dale Williams, Disco Kid (guitar) Richard Williams (bass); Atakatune (congas, tympani); Michael Anderson, Luqman Ali (percussion); June Tyson, Eddie Tahmahs, James Jacson (space ethnic voices)

Greatest Hits: Track Listing: 1. Saturn 2. Kingdom of Not 3. Medicine for a Nightmare 4. Enlightenment 5. 'Round Midnight 6. Velvet 7. Rocket Number Nine Takes Off for the Planet Venus 8. I Loves You, Porgy 9. We Travel The Spaceways 10. When Angels Speak of Love 11. Thither and Yon 12. Pleasure 13. The Alter Destiny 14. Yucatan 15. Otherness Blue 16. We'll Wait for You 17. The Order of the Pharanoic Jesters 18. The Perfect Man Personnel: The Arkestra, recorded in different sessions from 1956 to 1973 with many of the musicians listed above

November 28, 2000