Sun Ra - 1996 - The Singles

Sun Ra

1996

The Singles

101. The Nu Sounds A Foggy Day 1:03
102. The Cosmic Rays Daddy's Gonna Tell You No Lie 1:49
103. The Cosmic Rays Dreaming 2:43
104. The Cosmic Rays Daddy's Gonna Tell You No Lie (Alternate Version) 3:03
105. The Cosmic Rays / Le Sun Ra And His Arkestra Bye Bye 2:49
106. The Cosmic Rays / Le Sun Ra And His Arkestra Somebody's In Love 1:47
107. Le Sun Ra And His Arkestra Medicine For A Nightmare 2:35
108. Le Sun Ra And His Arkestra Saturn 3:00
109. Le Sun Ra And His Arkestra Supersonic Jazz 2:33
110. The Qualities Happy New Year To You! 1:48
111. The Qualities It's Christmas Time 2:43
112. Yochanan Muck Muck (Matt Matt) 2:46
113. Yochanan Hot Skillet Mama 3:12
114. Le Sun Ra And His Arkestra Great Balls Of Fire 5:28
115. Le Sun Ra And His Arkestra Hours After 2:45
116. Juanita Rogers / Lynn Hollings Teenager's Letter Of Promises 3:42
117. Juanita Rogers I'm So Glad You Love Me 3:05
118. Yochanan / Sun Ra And The Arkestra The Sun One 2:30
119. Yochanan / Sun Ra And The Arkestra The Sun Man Speaks 4:34
120. Yochanan / Sun Ra And The Arkestra The Sun Man Speaks (Alternate Version) 3:49
121. Sun Ra And His Astro Infinity Arkestra October 4:40
122. Sun Ra And His Astro Infinity Arkestra Adventure In Space 1:53
123. Yochanan / Sun Ra And The Arkestra Message To Earthman 2:23
124. Yochanan / Sun Ra And The Arkestra Message To Earthman (Alternate Version) 2:22
125. Sun Ra And The Arkestra* State Street 3:31

201. Sun Ra & His Myth Science Arkestra The Blue Set 4:40
202. Sun Ra & His Myth Science Arkestra Big City Blues 3:13
203. Little Mack (2) Tell Her To Come On Home 2:07
204. Little Mack (2) I'm Making Believe 3:14
205. Sun Ra And His Outer Space Arkestra The Bridge 1:57
206. Sun Ra And His Outer Space Arkestra Rocket #9 2:23
207. Sun Ra And His Astro-Solar-Infinity Arkestra Blues On Planet Mars 3:25
208. Sun Ra And His Astro-Solar-Infinity Arkestra Saturn Moon 2:13
209. Lacy Gibson The Sky Is Crying 2:50
210. Lacy Gibson She's My Baby 2:07
211. Lacy Gibson I Am Gonna Unmask The Batman 2:44
212. Lacy Gibson I Want An Easy Woman 2:44
213. Sun Ra And His Astro-Galactic Infinity Arkestra I Am Gonna Unmask The Batman 2:19
214. Sun Ra And His Astro-Galactic Infinity Arkestra The Perfect Man 4:54
215. Sun Ra And His Astro-Galactic Infinity Arkestra Journey To Saturn 3:43
216. Sun Ra And His Astro-Galactic Infinity Arkestra Enlightenment 3:26
217. Sun Ra Love In Outer Space 3:49
218. Sun Ra Mayan Temple 4:14
219. Sun Ra And The Arkestra Disco 2100 2:43
220. Sun Ra And The Arkestra Sky Blues 2:34
221. Sun Ra Rough House Blues 3:35
222. Sun Ra Cosmo-Extensions 4:24
223. Sun Ra And His Outer Space Arkestra Quest 2:38
224. Sun Ra And His Outer Space Arkestra Outer Space Plateau 2:22.

Compilation of rare Sun Ra 7" singles originally on the El Saturn label and pressed in very small quantities between 20 - 100 copies.

Styles range from doo wop, novelty pop, rhythm n' blues, straight-ahead jazz - plus early strains of the free-synth skronk that Ra would later explore in the '60s and '70s.

Hard to get your head around the whole double cd as the tracks are all quite short and fly by pretty quickly. Needs a bit of intensive listening.

The Perfect Man is a masterpiece of blurting synth and funky drums - a bit like a forerunner of Blow Your Head by Fred Wesley & the JBs perhaps. That's about my favourite discovery at the moment.

Trying to collect these on original 7" would be a tricky task to say the least - so kudos to the compilers for making this stuff accessible to all. Great sleeve-notes too.

Sun Ra maintained a big band from 1955 until his death in 1993, even though he was even further out on the fringe of the music industry than Charles Mingus, who only held onto smaller groups. Sun Ra consistently maintained he came from another planet-and his taste in clothes and harmonies lent some credence to the claim-but he also felt he could connect with a broad terrestrial audience, which is why he continually released singles on his Saturn label. Some of these singles were his trademark space-jazz, but most of them were more down-to-earth-doo-wop, blues, R&B vocals, swing standards, novelty songs and big-band dance numbers. Yet they all had the Sun Ra touch, which made them weird and worldly all at once. --Geoffrey Himes

I realliy do think that if you're going to start anywhere with Sun Ra, this is the place. Well, maybe not if you're a deep and abiding free jazz fan, as there's pretty much no material here from between 1962 and about 1970, which happens to be the time he recorded the stuff that has brought him his widest popular acclaim among free jazz aficionados (the ESP stuff in particular), but I can't imagine someone being a devoted and committed free jazz fan and not having heard any of his ESP records. I also can't imagine someone whose musical tastes were such that they'd only be interested in free jazz and not in any of the myriad other styles on display here. In fact, I'd say this could serve not just as an overview of the many kinds of music Sun Ra produced, but as an overview of Black music from 1954-1982. (Sun Ra continued recording for another decade or so after 1982, but didn't issue any singles after that time; in my opinion no huge loss as after about that point his work stopped being as consistently brilliant.) There is doo-wop, blues, jazz, funk, R&B, and more to be found here. There are recordings of many of his standards, such as Rocket Number 9, Enlightenment, and Love in Outer Space. There are representatives of little-known but awesome Sun Ra periods, for instance the single version of "Disco 3000" from the month he spent in Italy in '78 which produced some of his finest LPs and the amazing doo-wop groups he was involved with under the name of "Lucifer" (which since has been documented more fully on the 2004 release "Spaceship Lullaby", which is a must-listen and highly recommended in its own right).

Drawbacks:

1. The sound quality on some of the tracks ("Enlightenment" for instance) is pretty ropey. This is a known hazard of Sun Ra albums, though; they're not all audiophile experiences.

2. It's not quite comprehensive, as there is one extremely rare Sun Ra single (Orbitation in Blue/A Blue One) that either was not known about or could not be located at the time this was compiled. (By "extremely rare" I mean there is, I believe, one copy known to be in existence.) There are a couple of other minor guest works with limited Ra involvement that aren't here either. Some of these, like the Wynonie Harris cuts he made his first ever recordings as a sideman on, are pretty great in their own right, but don't really belong here, IMO.

3. There are plenty of great Sun Ra standards that aren't featured here- no version, for instance, of Watusa, or Nuclear War, or of Shadow World. But honestly, Sun Ra had so many standards you couldn't feature them all even on a 2CD set.

Anyway, if you want to spring for a 2CD set, I'd take this one over "Easy Listening for Intergalactic Travel", which does an OK job and all but there's too much to Sun Ra to be summed up in one CD.