Oh yes… I’m only on track four of disc one, and already I love this collection.
Sun Ra is… well, a Legend. In the face of his wildly fecund creativity, my paltry words seem pretty redundant. The best thing to do is… rack ‘em up, and knock ‘em down.
That said, Sun Ra was himself also a poet (and pamphleteer!); words were important to him… so…
I recall reading a rather sniffy review (of a different collection of early Sun Ra material, which also included some of these singles), in which Sun Ra’s own material was praised to the skies, whilst the doo-wop kind of stuff was panned. I think that’s a mistake. Ra and his Arkestra bring their wonkiness to everything they do.
From squeaking drum-pedals, to slightly out of tune organs, or bass instruments, all seemingly recorded, for the most part, in single room single takes (you can just hear the ambience of the whole band/the mix, live in the room). I’m sure Ra will have used overdubs, since he uses everything in the most experimental of ways, but there’s almost always a raw organic wholeness to an awful lot of what he does.
I must also mention something poss’ a bit arcane and off-piste. Such territory is, after all, home turf for Ra and co. And that something, or someone, is Fred Lane (& co.). Sun Ra and his cohorts are kind of the Afro-centric, madly prolific, and – whilst still filled with wit and humour – deadly earnest version of Fred and his ‘pataphysical’ loon-brigade.
Or, put (very rightly) the other way around, Lane et al were a pale and tiny chip of the mother block, that was Ra and his team-mates…Whether the resemblance, or echoes, are intentional or accidental, matters not a whit to me.