The Sun Ra discography is one of the largest

discographies Discography is the study and cataloging of published sound recordings, often by specified artists or within identified music genres. The exact information included varies depending on the type and scope of the discography, but a discography entry ...

music history Music history, sometimes called historical musicology, is a highly diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies music from a historical point of view. In theory, "music history" could refer to the study of the history o ...

Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

keyboardist, bandleader and composer

Sun Ra Le Sony'r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993), better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific ou ...

recorded dozens of singles and over one hundred full-length albums, comprising well over 1,000 songs, and making him one of the most prolific recording artists of the 20th century.

History

His own

El Saturn Records El Saturn Records is an American record label founded in 1957 by Alton Abraham. Among the earliest African American-owned record labels, in the late 1950s and 1960s it was one of the most active artist-owned record labels in the United States. The ...

albums were usually printed in editions of 75 copies per album, and were sold primarily at live performances. Many of Sun Ra's early albums were recorded at home by Ra himself on

wire Overhead power cabling. The conductor consists of seven strands of steel (centre, high tensile strength), surrounded by four outer layers of aluminium (high conductivity). Sample diameter 40 mm A wire is a flexible strand of metal. Wire is c ...

or early

tape recorders An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present- ...

, and are decidedly

lo-fi Lo-fi (also typeset as lofi or low-fi; short for low fidelity) is a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate choice. The ...

. Despite the technological limitations, Ra used some innovative recording techniques, and these recordings provided an unprecedented level of documentation, and were inspirational in showing how artists could take control of the means of production and distribution of their works. Prior to the 1970s, most of these albums were produced in Chicago through the "El Saturn Records Research" enterprise established by Ra and his colleague Alton Abraham, while later El Saturn Records were produced in Philadelphia. A batch of the most significant recordings were licensed to

Impulse! Records Impulse! Records (occasionally styled as "¡mpulse! Records" and "¡!") is an American jazz record company and label established by Creed Taylor in 1960. John Coltrane was among Impulse!'s earliest signings. Thanks to consistent sales and positiv ...

in the mid-1970s. They were not as successful as hoped, and were deleted from the Impulse catalog, becoming available around the world as inexpensive "cut-outs" and making the music more widely available. Most El Saturn Records were hand-decorated by Arkestra members, and these LP records sometimes sell for high prices among collectors. These El Saturn Records releases, dating from the 1950s to at least the late 1980s, typically had little or no information as to performers or recording dates, and sometimes didn't even list the songs on the album, often pressing one LP side from one era with another from a different decade, leading to some confusion among completists and fans. After Sun Ra's death, many of his recordings were released on

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Oc ...

for the first time by

Evidence Records Evidence for a proposition is what supports this proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the supported proposition is true. What role evidence plays and how it is conceived varies from field to field. In epistemology, evidenc ...

, Ihnfinity Music,

ESP Disk ESP-Disk is a New York-based record company and label founded in 1963 by lawyer Bernard Stollman. History Though it originally existed to release Esperanto-based music, beginning with its second release (Albert Ayler's '' Spiritual Unity''), ESP ...

ZYX Music ZYX Music GmbH & Co. KG is a German record label that was founded in 1971 by Bernhard Mikulski. It is one of the most successful German record labels of the 1980s and 1990s. Until 1992, the label's name was Pop-Import Bernhard Mikulski. The labe ...

, or

Impulse! Impulse! Records (occasionally styled as "¡mpulse! Records" and "¡!") is an American jazz record company and label established by Creed Taylor in 1960. John Coltrane was among Impulse!'s earliest signings. Thanks to consistent sales and positiv ...

. As is the case with an artist whose output is so extensive, there is quite a bit of debate regarding his "best" albums. Of all these recordings, many critics and enthusiasts feel that the 1959

big band A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s ...

album '' Jazz In Silhouette'' is the best entry-point into his work, with ''

The Penguin Guide to Jazz ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz'' is a reference work containing an encyclopedic directory of jazz recordings on CD which were (at the time of publication) currently available in Europe or the United States. The first nine editions were compiled b ...

'' naming the album as part of a recommended "Core Collection" for any serious jazz fan and as "one of the most important jazz records since

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Albums

Studio Albums

Archival Releases

Posthumous releases of studio material and rehearsals

Live albums

Posthumous compilations

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ra, Sun Jazz discographies Discographies of American artists

Discography Discography is the study and cataloging of published sound recordings, often by specified artists or within identified music genres. The exact information included varies depending on the type and scope of the discography, but a discography entry ...