Music From Tomorrow's World

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 Ra¹s Chicago period, each focused on a different aspect of his concept... Driving down Cottage Grove you couldn¹t 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 Arkestra¹s 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 wouldn¹t 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 Arkestra¹s 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 Ra¹s compositional and arranging genius, the heroic efforts of his band. Yet a couple more key pieces in the big puzzle that is Sun Ra¹s master-oeuvre.