Sun Ra - 1973 - Deep Purple (Dreams Come True)

Sun Ra

1973

Deep Purple (Dreams Come True)

01. Deep Purple
02. Piano Interlude
03. Can This Be Love?
04. Dreams Come True
05. Don't Blame Me
06.' S Wonderful
07. Love Come Back To Me
08. The World Of The Invisible
09. The Order Of The Pharaonic Jesters
10. The Land Of The Day Star

Sun Ra: Piano, Vocals
Stuff Smith: Violin ( 1)
Wilbur Ware: Bass (3)
Pat Patrick: Alto Saxophone (4)
John Gilmore: Tenor Saxophone (4, 8-10)
Art Hoyle: Trumpet (4)
Vic Sproles: Bass (4, 5-7)
Robert Barry: Drums (4, 5-7)
Clyde Williams: Vocals (4)
Tito: Congas (5-7)
Hattie Randolph: Vocals (5-7)
Kwame Hadi (Lamont McClamb): Trumpet (8-10)
Akh Tal Ebah (D. E. Williams): Trumpet (8-10)
Marshall Allen: Alto Sax (8-10)
Eloe Omoe: Bass Clarinet (8-10)
Ronnie Boykins: Bass (8-10)
Harry Richards: Drums (8-10)
Derek Morris: Drums, Percussion (8-10)

This LP was also released under the title "Dreams Come True."

Tracks on side A recorded between 1949 and 1955 in Chicago.

Tracks on side B were recorded at Variety Studios, New York, in 1973, as part of the CYMBALS sessions intended for release on (but rejected by) Impulse Records. The complete Cymbals sessions (11 tracks) were issued on Modern Harmonic in 2018.

Track A1-A7 are Sun Ra's earliest known recordings, first released in 1973 as the A-side of "Deep Purple" (El Saturn 485). Recording dates and personnel for these tracks are speculative. Track A1 was recorded between 1953 and 1954. Tracks A2 to A7 are thought to have been recorded in 1955. They were reissued as bonus tracks on? Sound Sun Pleasure!! on Evidence (5) Records ?(ECD 22014-2, 1991)

The earliest known Sun Ra recording, later released under his own name, was captured on July 29, 1948 at his flat on his Ampex reeltoreel tape recorder as he jammed on 1933 hit "Deep Purple" with jazz violinist Stuff Smith. Sounding like an ancient transmission, the song shimmers with arcane crackle as Smith's creaking violin dances with Ra's eerie Hammond Solovox, a primitive electronic instrument he'd acquired in 1941. "Deep Purple" eventually became title track of a 1973 Saturn album

Wait, this is Sun Ra? I'd scarcely believe it if having heard. No big band freak-outs, no cosmic prayer, no electric keyboard madness: this is, for the most part, a dark and smoky vocal jazz album consisting mostly of covers, with the Arkestra supposedly providing the backing. Hatty Randolph's singing sounds alluring and sensual yet all the while sounding slightly disinterested, and the rather low fidelity producting shrouds both her and the Arkestra in a cloud of dense smoke. For those wondering where the weirdness listeners had come to associate with Sun Ra thus far,"The World of the Invisible" is one of the more conventional Ra tracks on here, with some furious skronk laid down by his brass section and some more powerful and jaunty electric keyboard melodies courtesy of the man himself while the band plays away in the background, though it never really reaches the chaotic heights of some of Ra's other albums. Closer "Land of the Day Star" picks things up with a heavy, sawing string melody lurking in the background while halfway through the song a soulful saxophone solo swings through Ra's domineering keyboard and the crashing drumming to take centre-stage before the song simply fades out, ending the album. This is certainly something different from Ra, and the A-side is easily one of the more conventional pieces Sun Ra has ever done, making this bona-fide standards record an excellent starting place for Ra's latter day works.