Tabs Out | Sun Ra and His Arkestra – Sun Ra with Pharaoh Sanders and Black Harold

Sun Ra and His Arkestra – Sun Ra with Pharaoh Sanders and Black Harold

Let’s get this straight: Sun Ra claims to be from Saturn. This is not a joke, and you can’t disprove it, even though his earthly body has succumbed to its own breaking down. He’s just left that body behind and returned from whence he came. Can you imagine someone like Bjorn Copeland claiming something like that? Chick Corea? Merzbow? Couldn’t pull it off if they tried. Sun Ra was the real deal because he was the REAL DEAL. He brought us through the present and into the future. Now we just have to somehow get out of this timeline and back to the one Sun Ra had started us down, the correct one, and we’ll be just peachy…

Fortunately, he left us a whole mess of jazz to sift through. I know some of you are scared of jazz, but that’s just foolish and reckless horsecrap. You should embrace it because it makes you a better person. It will allow you to appreciate things you normally wouldn’t appreciate. Unappreciable things. Jazz could even make you appreciate a man who said he was some Saturn, who then dropped like a million tons of jazz on the world. You should check out the Sun Ra archive on Bandcamp. It’s quite extensive.

So this document of Sun Ra’s appearance on December 31, 1964, at Judson Hall in New York has never before seen the light of day. I’ll let you read the notes on the album page so I don’t have to rehash them here, but tracks 6 through 11 ONLY appeared on the 1976 LP “Featuring Pharaoh Sanders and Black Harold,” which of course is twelve years after the session. (Sun Ra was a notoriously poor archivist of his own material.) Somehow (dark magic? Grift? Mind control? Blackmail? Nuclear threats?) Pennsylvania’s Orb Tapes got their hands on the cassette rights for this thing, and now, in 2019, FIFTY-FIVE YEARS after the original session, all tracks – not just 6 through 11 but ONE through 11 – appear on an actual physical tape. It’s like Sun Ra himself has reached all the way through time and space and made it happen.

So take it from me: buy it. Listen to it. Embrace it. Embrace jazz. It’s the Arkestra, man. What do you want me to tell you?

Edition of 200 comes in “green shells with pro pad printing, white/clear cases, pro-dubbed in realtime.” Get hopping, fools!