Sun Ra

The first time the Chicago Arkestra was captured on a proper LP. Laying exotic percussion and electric keyboards over the framework of Henderson-style arranging, it first revealed the new worldview of the man who had changed his name.

• Recorded in Chicago in 1956 and released on producer Tom Wilson's Transition label. Other labels later reissued it as “Sun Song.”
• Sun Ra played electric piano on some tracks. At a time when electric keyboards were rare in jazz, their clear, metallic timbre rings differently from an acoustic piano.
• The form is the familiar one in which the horns state the theme together, pass around solos, and return to the theme (head-solo-head), but the harmonies are thick and strangely askew, so it sounds different in grain from ordinary swing.
• Besides the drums, timpani and an array of percussion lay the rhythmic foundation. His particular fascination with percussion is already evident here.

Regarded as the fully formed Chicago Arkestra, with Gilmore, Patrick, Allen, and Boykins in place. The dignity of a swing band and his visions of ancient Egypt share a single record.

• In “Ancient Aiethopia,” flute and horns unfold Eastern-tinged melodies over a piano repeating the same short figure (ostinato). A passage in which the trumpeter half-sings, half-chants is especially striking.
• “Enlightenment” would rarely be missing from Arkestra performances for decades to come. Remember its gracefully swaying theme, and you will recognize it in the late live recordings too.
• In “Blues at Midnight,” John Gilmore's tenor saxophone takes a long solo over a 12-bar blues. Here you can hear the firm, cutting sound that Coltrane is said to have admired.
• Ronnie Boykins's bass is the center of gravity of the whole record. With deep, weighty notes it supports the horn ensemble while pushing the rhythm forward.

The title is the nickname of Birmingham, where he grew up. Amid the impoverished communal life of New York, he portrayed his hometown not as a set melody but as a collective soundscape.

• The title track runs nearly 27 minutes, a performance built together by musicians responding to one another's sounds without any predetermined chord progression (collective improvisation).
• It is unclear who the featured soloist is. Piccolo, saxophones, and trumpet rise and sink in turn, while Sun Ra steers the larger flow with cues from the keyboard.
• Alongside the piano, Sun Ra used early electronic keyboards such as the clavioline. Its thin, quavering sound blends with the acoustic horns to create strange colors.
• Rather than keeping a steady beat, the rhythm swells and recedes like the tide. Try listening by following the rise and fall of energy instead of a fixed meter.

A record from ESP-Disk, the cradle of New York free jazz. Instead of long improvisations, it sketches, one by one, the cosmic landscapes he imagined in short, condensed fragments of sound.

• Each track is short, just a few minutes long. Each is built like a miniature that tests a single mood or timbre.
• The bass marimba and timpani, played by Sun Ra himself, produce a round resonance in the low register. It is a sound seldom heard on a jazz record.
• Ronnie Boykins's bowed bass (arco) draws long, dark lines that widen the music's sense of space.
• The horns appear and vanish less as carriers of melody than as short cries or splashes of color. It pays to listen closely to the spaces between sound and silence.

A companion to the film of the same name, this record voices most directly his conviction that the Black future is to be found in space. June Tyson's voice carries that message in song.

• The title track runs past 20 minutes. An exchange (call and response) in which the band members answer short cries led by June Tyson repeats without end, piling up like an incantation.
• The song addresses its listeners as an invitation to leave this place, now, for another world. Its feeling sits somewhere between sermon and celebration.
• Beneath the repeating chant the horns swell into ever rougher, freer improvisation, until steady chorus and chaos lie layered together.
• The thick, distorted sound pouring from Sun Ra's electric organ wraps around everything. It was recorded in a Chicago studio in the fall of 1972.

Here the man known as the most experimental of musicians melts the funk and soul of his day into a slow, dreamlike flow. It is another face of the late 1970s, when he was weighing his livelihood and his audience.

• The title track opens with soft electric-piano chords and an unhurried bass groove. It feels as though a rhythm that splits the beat to set bodies swaying (funk) has been stretched out to a very slow tempo.
• Two electric guitars trade short rhythmic figures to lay down the floor, while the horns drift slowly above.
• Rather than dazzling solos, Sun Ra concentrates on brushing in color with his electric keyboards. The space between the notes creates the album's atmosphere.
• For anyone expecting the rough edges of free jazz, it is surprisingly easygoing. It shows that he kept his ears open to the currents of popular music as well.