"His names were many: christened Herman Blount, he reinvented himself as Sonny Blount, H. Sonne Blount, Le Sony’r Ra, and, finally, what he called his 'vibrational name,' Sun Ra. Ra’s band, too, was rich in appellation—one could compile a dizzyingly poetic list of its nearly fifty names, including the Myth Science Arkestra, the Intergalactic Research Arkestra, the Cosmo Drama Arkestra, the Transmolecular Arkestra, and the Love Adventure Arkestra. As many names, Ra might have said, as there are stars in the sky. This jazz visionary was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and not on Saturn, as he often claimed; in Chicago, in the late forties, a young Sonny Blount played piano with Fletcher Henderson, sharpening his formidable skills as a composer and arranger with the big-band legend."
Paris Review
2008 September: Sun Ra, 2010 August: Disco 3000: Complete Milan Concert [1978], 2010 August: Sounds from Tomorrow's World: Sun Ra and the Chicago Years, 1946-1961, 2010 October: Sun Ra on Artbeat, 2010 November: The Magic Sun (1966), 2010 November: Space Is the Place (1974), 2010 December: Sun Ra in Egypt and Italy, 2011 April: A Joyful Noise (1980), 2011 August: Lanquidity, 2012 Thursday: BBC Documentary: Sun Ra, Brother From Another Planet, 2012 July: The Paris Tapes, 1971, 2012 November: Sun Ra Arkestra - Points On A Space Age, 2012 December: Super-Sonic Jazz.
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