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Sun Ra - Music from tomorrow's world
Info from
Atavistic on the release of Music from
Tomorrow's World, november 2002:
Saturate in this excerpt from John Corbett's liner notes, and imagine
this beauty and it's sumptuous 12-panel booklet smoldering in yr
hands...:
"Here are two late-breaking installations from a single season in the
story of Sun Rašs Chicago period, each focused on a different aspect
of his concept... Driving down Cottage Grove you couldn't miss it,
right next to the bank, with glass-brick facade and a sign out front:
Wonder Inn. A long tavern, a straight shot back to the restrooms at
the rear with a bar stretching along one side and tables on the other;
an odd, baroquely decorated canopy arched over the cramped stage,
classic Chicago pressed-tin ceiling above it. There was music nightly
from 10 PM to 4 AM, and for a very long stretch the house band was
Sun Ra and his Arkestra, in a rather economical six-piece incarnation
of the ensemble featuring tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, cornetist
Phil Cohran plus vocals by Ricky Murray.
Over the course of the Arkestrašs Wonder Inn year-long stay, Roland
Kirk came out and sat in with the band, as did Stan Getz. John
Coltrane, reputedly stood out front but wouldnšt come inside, for
mysterious reasons. Cohran remembers looking out into the crowd and
seeing people who he would come to know better a few years later-
namely the future founders of the Association for the Advancement of
Creative Musicians, including Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell
and Joseph Jarman.
If the Wonder Inn recordings have been much speculated over during the
four decades since they were made, a studio date from someplace called
Majestic Hall rings only very distant bells, even for those who played
on it. Majestic Hall was a fantastic session, with a slightly larger
octet incarnation of the Arkestra, including Cohran on cornet, Gilmore
again in gorgeous form, Marshall Allen and two other saxophonists:
Gene Easton on alto and Ronald Wilson on baritone. Drummer Robert
Barry is explosive on the latter track,and as with the Wonder Inn
tracks, bassist Ronnie Boykins was the Arkestrašs unfailing rudder.
Behind it all looms the creative fireball named Sun Ra, concocting
ceaselessly creative intros, comping imaginatively, or going without
horns on the fragment of "Interstellar Lo-Ways" that closes the disc.
The Wonder Inn: Arkestra in motion, as part of the community, engaging
the underground jazz intelligentsia on the south side. Majestic Hall:
the grand scale of Ra's compositional and arranging genius, the heroic
efforts of his band. Yet a couple more key pieces in the big puzzle
that is Sun Ra's master-oeuvre. |
