Sun Ra - Solo Piano Volume 1

Sun Ra alone at a piano in a New York studio on 20 May 1977, with Paul Bley producing for his own Improvising Artists label. No Arkestra, no synthesizers, no costumes, no light show.

The record opens with the traditional "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child," seven and a half minutes that make the case immediately: the man who built a mythology out of Saturn was also a formidable ballad player with deep roots in stride and swing. Jerome Kern's "Yesterdays" gets the same treatment. The originals, "Cosmo Rhythmatic," "Romance Of Two Planets," "Irregular Galaxy" and "To A Friend," go further out without ever losing the thread back.

Tony May engineered. Carol Goss made the cover using a Paik-Abe video synthesizer, which is about as 1977 as an album jacket can get. For anyone who knows Sun Ra only through the big Arkestra records, this is the one that reframes him.

Original 1977 US pressing on Improvising Artists Inc., catalog IAI 37.38.50.

Used copy: VG+ vinyl / VG+ sleeve