Sun Ra: Greatest Hits: Easy Listening For Intergalactic Travel : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Somewhere, in a galaxy far, far away, you can hear Sun Ra on Top Forty radio. We should be so lucky. Pegged in his lifetime (1915-1993) as a jazz eccentric with a messianic complex, the late Ra was a composer and bandleader who believed in the universal magic of his music. Greatest Hits is a fine neophyte's introduction to Ra's self-made world of cosmological metaphor and audacious swing. "We Travel the Spaceways" and "Rocket Number Nine . . ." were true hits, fixtures of his live sets; "Otherness Blue," cool-organ soul from 1969, and the hot '56 jump "Medicine for a Nightmare" emphasize the mother-ship connections -- to jazz tradition and the healing arts -- in Ra's utopian dream. Advanced Ra disciples can skip Hits and go right to the Great Lost booty: two '73 LPs shelved during the chaos of Ra's brief association with the Impulse label. The first one, Cymbals, is a bluesy smoker; "Thoughts Under a Dark Blue Light" and "The Order of the Pharaonic Jesters" are extended essays in juke-joint futurism. The second disk, Crystal Spears, is a big-band fantasia propelled by an army of percussionists and Ra's Afro-space keys; "Sunrise in the Western Sky" is a marathon showcase for Ra's devoted tenor saxman, the late John Gilmore. Extra booklet fun: ex-Impulse! producer Ed Michel's juicy essay about Ra's mastery of earthly contract negotiations. (RS 856/857)

DAVID FRICKE