{"id":27198,"date":"2025-03-18T07:44:59","date_gmt":"2025-03-18T07:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=27198"},"modified":"2025-03-18T08:15:08","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T08:15:08","slug":"music-art-sun-ra-singles-1952-1991","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=27198","title":{"rendered":"MUSiC(&amp; ART!): Sun Ra, Singles, 1952-1991"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1024\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/img_5424-1-1024x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-27160\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/img_5424-1-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/img_5424-1-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/img_5424-1-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/img_5424-1-768x768.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/img_5424-1-100x100.jpg 100w, http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/img_5424-1.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"184\" height=\"30\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/stars_11_six-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-26752\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh yes\u2026 I\u2019m only on track four of disc one, and already I love this collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sun Ra is\u2026 well, a Legend. In the face of his wildly fecund creativity, my paltry words seem pretty redundant. The best thing to do is\u2026 rack \u2018em up, and knock \u2018em down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That said, Sun Ra was himself also a poet (and pamphleteer!); words were important to him\u2026 so\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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\u2019s own material was praised to the skies, whilst the doo-wop kind of stuff was panned. I think that\u2019s a mistake. Ra and his Arkestra bring their wonkiness to everything they do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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\u2019m sure Ra will have used overdubs, since he uses everything in the most experimental of ways, but there\u2019s almost always a raw organic wholeness\ufffc to an awful lot of what he does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I must also mention something poss\u2019 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 (&amp; co.). Sun Ra and his cohorts are kind of the Afro-centric, madly prolific, and &#8211; whilst still filled with wit and humour &#8211; deadly earnest version of Fred and his \u2018pataphysical\u2019 loon-brigade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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\u2026Whether the resemblance, or echoes, are intentional or accidental, matters not a whit to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh yes\u2026 I\u2019m only on track four of disc one, and already I love this collection. Sun Ra is\u2026 well, a Legend. In the face of his wildly fecund creativity, my paltry words seem pretty redundant. The best thing to do is\u2026 rack \u2018em up, and knock \u2018em down. That said, Sun Ra was himself &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=27198\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;MUSiC(&amp; ART!): Sun Ra, Singles, 1952-1991&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-74G","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27198"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27198"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27205,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27198\/revisions\/27205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}