Anthony Elms

Provides the barest of outlines to the evolution of Sun Ra's personal mythology, illustrative rather than exhaustive, and emphasizing its development while Sun Ra lived and worked on Chicago's South Side. Corbett provides the most straight-ahead essay, noting the ideas of Sun Ra and his artistic / business partner Alton Abraham. The remaining contributions spotlight various developments through artist's recollections (reading as though transcribed from a personal conversation), color separations for album covers, sketches in notebooks, ticket stubs, and correspondence.

The focus here is on the myth and aesthetic context, not the music though Corbett does include description of the sessions released as Super-Sonic Jazz on Sun Ra's label, Saturn Records.

Why does Corbett use the hyphen in the title? Sun-Ra does not seem to be among the many names Sonny Blount used for himself.… (mer)