Sun Ra

The Sun Ra Arkestra is playing in Buffalo on Thursday next week at one of my favorite venues Asbury Hall. I would like to see the performances but we have a wedding to get to in Cleveland. Becky and I saw Sun Ra playing at Artpark many years ago in 1981. It was a wonderful show with Grover Washington Jr also on the bill.  A number of years before that I saw him several times in Philadelphia when he was playing block party shows at the park in our Germantown neighborhood in the 1970's.

My friend John and I went over to Morton Street where Sun Ra had his home and band headquarters. It was a five minute drive or 20 minute walk. We had done both. He would sometimes play in the park across the street. We went over there in 1974 and 1975. The band still has that house today.

One time in 1974 John and I went over to the park and saw Sun Ra sharing the stage with another neighborhood musician Rufus Harley who played jazz bagpipes. That was quite the show.

The Sun Ra House is still there on Morton Street today and not only is it still the headquarters of the Sun Ra Arkestra but it is also a kind of living museum full of concert posters, paintings, sheet music dedicated to keeping the spirit of Sun Ra alive. 

Sun Ra Arkestra Director Marshall Allen still lives in the house.

Over the years I collected a lot of Sun Ra music. He was a very interesting man. I would have liked to basked in his light one more time with his music that has been carried on since his passing.

Sun Ra in my collection:

• Angels and Demons at Play, 1965
• The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra Volume 1 & 2, 1965
• When Angels Speak of Love, 1966
• Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth, 1966
• We Travel the Space Ways, 1967
• Sun Sound Pleasure, 1970
• Space is the Place, 1972
• Cosmos, 1976
• The Soul Vibrations of Man, 1977
• Sleeping Beauty, 1979
• Nuclear War, 1982
• The Space Age is Here to Stay, 2016