Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra

When someone finally got around to asking Sun Ra if he was part of the underground, he declared that he was in the sub-underground.

at The Cry of Jazz and another film called Unheard Melodies, which showed how wind caused statues to

“The Code of Interdependence,” on

On “Springtime in Chicago” Sonny played a piano so out of tune it sounded “prepared,” altered for percussive effects. And the electronic delay used on this cut was so extreme that it reverberates like Jamaican dub music which would not be heard until the 1960s.

Don Michael, a one-armed pianist who played and recorded with Erskine Hawkins in the mid-1940s.

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

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

Jazz in Silhouette was a major statement by the Arkestra, helped

Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun or Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet.