The Nubians of Plutonia, linking

Wilson proposed that a booklet of Sonny’s notes be included with the record—a very unusual practice then or now, as musicians are seldom trusted to explain their own work—and he took full advantage of it, filling it with his poetry and various musings. Yet when Sonny suggested the notes be titled “Preparation for Outer Space,” Wilson thought he was

“The Code of Interdependence,” on

“Saturday Night on Saturn,” “Atlantis,” “Voodoo Dreams,” and “Pyramid of the Sun.” Sonny first heard Baxter on Perfume Set to Music (1946) and Music Out of the Moon (1947), two albums built around melodies for theremin performed by Dr. Samuel Hoffman, a Los Angeles podiatrist who had played on the soundtracks of Spellbound and The Lost Weekend.

First of all I express sincerity. There’s also that sense of humor, by which people sometimes learn to laugh about themselves. I mean, the situation is so serious that the people could go crazy because of it. They need to smile and realize how ridiculous everything is. A race without a sense of humor is in bad shape. A race needs clowns. In earlier

“Ancient Aiethopia” calls up the spirit of Ellington’s programmatic

The Cry of Jazz—was based in part on an unpublished book by Bland entitled The Fruits of the Death of Jazz.

In fact, he was a romantic in the strict sense of the term, one who believed that music should be composed and played through the “addition of strangeness to beauty.”

Cotton Comes to Harlem, Shaft, Hit Man, and Superfly are also clear.