Quantum 2:
Down Beat 63:12, p. 12
(12/96)
Over the course of the late bandleader's 50-year career, he used the format of
the single – 45s – to document the varied interests of his diverse musical mind.
Rarities such as Sun Ra backing up the doo-wop bands, recordings made at
Arkestra rehearsals and a couple of blues recordings collectively make up a
document that should prompt a re-evaluation of the work by this one-time
arranger for Fletcher Henderson.
Ra's was a spotty recording career, especially early on, because he recorded almost exclusively for his homespun label, Saturn Records. Uniformly scattershot in its approach to issuing music, Saturn issued singles (it was cheap) in what amounted to an ad-hoc approach to documentation. Taken with Saturn's virtually non-existent distribution, the utter obfuscation of the work of one of the longer-lived large bands is understandable. Said Gordon, "Saturn started out as 45s, and when they put out longer-length albums, it was a track from this year and a track from that year." The tunes all have the telltales signs of Ra's intergalactic interests, a sort of proto-Afrocentrism crossed with a sense of humor, even on the tracks he only produced or arranged. Song titles, instrumentation, arrangements, personnel and recording techniques all bear the mark of Ra's quirky genius.
Sun Ra: the Singles encapsulates all of the versions of singles issued on Saturn that never made it onto LPs, true rarities. So rare were the sides that sometimes only one copy represented their existence. "This is pretty obscure stuff," said co-produced Robert Campbell. "I get the feeling if we had waited a few more years to put it out, it would have been gone for good."
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