Customer Reviews

Sun Song

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Recorded in 1956, Sun Ra's first album (here in its entirety)
is a welcome addition to anyone's musical library. Along with
streamlined swingers like "Brainville" or "Future", sly
finger-poppers like "Lullaby For Realville", and speculative
serenades like "New Horizons" or "Sun Song", the Delmark CD
presents the previously-unissued dance call, "Swing A Little
Taste". With its tip to the orchestral romps of Fletcher
Henderson, Tadd Dameron, and Dizzy Gillespie, bearing a
chromatic savoir faire worthy of Duke Ellington himself,
the landmark session is classic Sun Ra, pointing the way
for the instrumental voicings of the next half-century,
and beyond.

Arkestra perennials such as tenor giant John Gilmore and
maverick baritonist Pat Patrick take their place alongside
unsung titans such as the bright, buoyant trumpeter Art
Hoyle. Others, such as the renowned trombonist Julian
Priester, gained fame elsewhere, only to rejoin the fold
decades later. All and more are a treat for the ears.
As for the pianist (who doubles on haunting organ for the
title song), his playing is joyously bright with sobering
skill; always gentle in his fierce determination.

As the Myth-Realist stated in the 1950s, "There is a
great need for America to give all of its creative
artists a chance". A gauntlet in the face of everything
from that period's McCarthyism to current fund-cutting
and other forms of censorship, Ra's words and music
have always held true to this idiomatic creed.

If you've experienced Sun Ra's artistic diversity
over the years, this disc comes as a powerful
addition but no surprise. If, however, you are
among those who dismiss Mr. Mystery as an eerie
noisemaker, I offer you this delightful shock,
an accurate pointer to what this grandmaster
of Jazz has always been about.

This is - like - the great lost Big Band CD. As has been noted, the influence of the Jazz Greats is everywhere. And at moments it would be possible to mistake this for a Mingus or Tadd Dameron session. But there's always some interesting moment of quirkiness that marks it as pure - but prehistoric - Ra. A quick overview:

1) Brainville: Marvelous use of Pat Patrick's baritone sax. A hypnotic theme that has some of the externals of Duke or Mingus but is relentlessly non-developmental in a way they could never be. Muted trumpet emerges out of the ensemble like pure early Gil Evans (Ella Speed, for example). A shout riff functions as a ritornello, almost hilarious in its purely formal nature. What does it propel? Not much...Julian Priester's boppy trombone is grooving.
2) Call For All Demons - Classic Ra theme - the illegitimate child of Caravan and Horace Silver. John Gilmore w/ demented quasi-Dameronian style comping. Jim Herndon's tympani solo (!!!) the star of the show.
3) Transition - Swinging at its most unswinging swinging-ness.The cowbell on the beat. the electric bass dutifully walking. The baritone dominates the sax section in a way that creates teleological visions of Fela. The generic Clifford/Lee - ism of the hard bop trumpeters is really piquant in the context. And then there's James Scales with his tortured Bird-isms.
4)Possession - A ballad which evokes Glenn Miller's Serenade In Blue - a Chicago favorite. All Gilmore, naturally.
5) A Street Named Hell - Could be the theme from the film of the same name. The tympani is again the star - amazing! That electric bass is so bad it's good.
6) Lullaby for Realville - what a groovy period piece - handclaps and everything. Not a pointed parody like Herbie Nichols' 2300 Skidoo, but cut from the same cloth. Than goodness for the upright bass here. Piano solo is beautifully addlebrained.
7) Future - Ra's piano at its approximate best - somewhere between Billy Strayhorn, Tristano and early Cecil Taylor. A strange place. Great orchestration of the drums - bringing them in and out. A whole psychodrama in 2:54.
8) Swing A Little Taste - Ra Jazz at its Ra Jazziest. The title says it all. So many cliches, all served up with a perfect pince sans rire. Enumerating all of them and their derivations could be an article in itself.(Buster) Keaton-esquely hilarious.
9) New Horizons - an almost conventionally beautiful film noir-y ballad. Could come from David Raskin's score for Joseph H. Lewis' The Big Combo. Goes up - tempo near the end for no discernable reason. Performance is so ragged, but that's part of its beauty.
10) Fall Off The Log -The incipient whole-toniness of some of the tunes doesn't really inform the solo sections as much as I might like. That's a typical transition Swing - to - Bop strategy that dates Sonny a bit. But somehow it's all of a jagged piece.
11) Sun Song - finally at the end the organ raises its lovely grotesque head. Perfect South Side Exotica. Chimes, temple blocks. Was Les Baxter an actual influence? I have no doubt...

this was the first jazz CD that i ever bought and i have been pleasently rewarded with sweet sounds and interesting harmonies. definately a good introduction to jazz and the cosmic world of sun ra.

This album is a tricky one. If you'd no knowledge it was Sun Ra, no clue as to what was to come, Sun Song would probably never register as anything beyond a pleasant late big-band romp. Certainly next to Davis' work during this period (Milestones, 'Round about midnight) feels like just 'so much more of the same', though still a very enjoyable listen. That isn't to say that aren't clues that something is amiss. Side one (I have the vinyl) contains a few moments that suggest the vastly more sophisticated and at times borderline experimental approach we'd see on Angels and Demons at Play. There's also familiar numbers--passages that would grow into monsters down the road.

Contrasting Sun Ra to Davis is a weird sort of thing, because while Davis pushed the envelope of jazz hard, Sun Ra moved too quickly. The leap between Sun Song and Angles and Demons at Play is massive while still only one small step compared to the leap to albums like Secrets of the Sun or Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy--and even then, the distance is little more than a couple years. Even with a good label and distribution, I'd doubt the jazz world could have kept up: If Davis was a race car pushing jazz forward, then Sun Ra was a rocket ship, and pretty soon he'd be too far out of the stratosphere to even bear much comparison to what had been jazz.

With Sun Song we hear a really good but unsurprising album; he'd not even begun to redefine jazz and there's no real hint of his afro-cosmology. Regardless, it's always good to hear Sun Ra play more standard, melodic fare, and he's a good and talented composer--making this a good one to have around, albeit not a particularly overwhelming release by the man from Saturn.

Simply put, if I had to pick my all time favorite album of a life time, this would be it. It was so far ahead of it's time and so beautiful at the same time, this is as fun to listen to today as it was in the mid 1950s. The only differance is that it sounds like music of today rather than outer space music of the future, now.

John

These are not the jazz standards of Sound Sun Pleasure and a couple others first on the list, but a great collections of slightly experimental songs that Sun Ra did many times over the years and in his live shows.

Ra fans will want this album. It shows where his head was at circa 1956, and captures the Arkestra at an interesting period where they could swing tight and hard. The sound quality and quality of the playing are both high.

It should be noted, though, that the album is still relatively conventional and not as extraordinary as "Super Sonic Jazz" which Ra issued on his own label shortly after this, or the next session for Transition/Delmark now called "Sound of Joy".