FROM SONNY BLOUNT TO SUN RA: The Chicago Years

© Robert L. Campbell, Christopher Trent, and Robert Pruter

Sun Ra at the piano, 1958. From the film The Cry of Jazz.

Revision note. We have restored the first surviving Space Trio session to the discography. We had inadvertently left it off this page.

Sun Ra's musical career is hard to generalize about. He led bands for nearly 60 years. He made something like 125 LPs. He performed everything from 1930s hotel-band schmaltz to synthesizer pieces that twittered and clunked like a demented Pac-man machine. This page will follow Sunny through the first half of his career -- from his days as Sonny Blount in Birmingham through the end of his breakthrough period in Chicago, where he changed his name and founded his Arkestra.

Sun Ra believed in eternal being. Birth was a bad word in his lexicon. One of his "equations of sound-similarity" was B-I-R-T-H = B-E-R-T-H. If you were born, that meant you were going to find your place of B-E-R-T- H -- i.e., your final resting place -- i.e., the grave. Sunny preferred to say he had "arrived on the planet," and was more than a little vague about when that happened -- maybe in 1055, he would say, maybe a few thousand years before that.

His passport and his high school records tell a more mundane story. Herman Poole Blount was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on May 22, 1914. From very early on he was known as Sonny -- spelled with an "o," of course. About his family we know little. He had an older brother, Robert, an older half-sister, Mary, and an older stepbrother, Cary Blount, Jr. Three more stepsiblings resided in Demopolis, Alabama. His mother ran restaurants.

The family home was in a strange location. In a Southern city that was heavily segregated by race, the Blounts did not live in either a black neighborhood or a white neighborhood. Theirs was the only house on an entire city block. They were located across the street from the Post Office and close to the main railroad station. As a child, Sonny could look out the window and see the big sign over the railroad tracks that greeted visitors to The Magic City; many years later that would become the title of one of his greatest (and most avant-garde) compositions. To the north, there were just open fields.

There was a piano in the house (Sunny told interviewers it was a present for his tenth "arrival day") and his family seems to have encouraged his musical aspirations. He was a genuine prodigy, but his boasts that he could read music without training should be discounted -- even Mozart needed instruction. Though a shy and reserved individual, he struck up a friendship with another young pianist, Avery Parrish (1917-1959). They played duets together and challenged each other to write their first compositions. And while attending Industrial High School -- where he was a straight A student -- he came under the tutelage of John Tuggle "Fess" Whatley. Fess Whatley has grown legendary as a music educator (now duly celebrated in the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame), so it may come as a shock to realize that he was employed as a shop teacher, and all of his musical instruction took place after hours.

One of Sonny's first compositions (written in 1929 or 1930) was titled "Chocolate Avenue." In 1933, he mailed it to Clarence Williams in New York City. Williams used it on a record--without crediting Sonny for the piece or paying him a dime in royalties. Sonny's lifelong distrust of the music business began right there.

Before he left graduated from high school in January 1932, Sonny was already playing piano on a substitute basis with bands like the Society Troubadours. He subbed (for Curly Parrish,Avery's older brother) in at least one of Fess Whatley's three bands, the Sax-o-Society Orchestra. In later years took pains to emphasize that such bands played for society dances and other genteel events, not in taverns or nightclubs.

By this time, Sonny was listening avidly to recordings by all the jazz "Masters" when they came out. In fact he collected so many 78s that one day he stacked them too high, and the pile fell over and injured him. In 1933, he transcribed a band arrangement off a record for the first time. It was Yeah Man, freshly released by Fletcher Henderson. Sonny always had the highest admiration for Henderson's band -- he speculated that it must have been populated with angels rather than ordinary Earthlings -- and he would call this tune well over a thousand times on the bandstand. The other three titles recorded on that same session (Can You Take It?; King Porter Stomp; and Queer Notions) didn't escape his attention either; all of them stayed in the Arkestra's book from 1966 onward.

In the fall of 1934, Sonny Blount went on a tour of the Southeast with a band led by Ethel Harper, a biology teacher who had ambitions to make it as a singer. In fact she decamped mid-tour with a vocal group, leaving Sonny in charge (the band got notices in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender). The Sonny Blount Band ranged as far as Chicago, where Sonny joined Musicians Union Local 208 on December 15, 1934. Eventually he would alter his destiny in Chicago....

He attended Alabama A&M University in Huntsville as a music education major. He was inordinately proud of having done so ("I think I studied everything in that college except farming"). He was able to attend for just one year (1935 - 1936); in the depths of the Great Depression, his family couldn't afford the tuition, but Dr. S. F. Harris, who lived in his neighborhood, paid for scholarships for Sonny and several other musicians from his high school. The music department gave him a good deal of classical training (up through Chopin and Rachmaninoff anyway); you could always hear it in his improvised preludes, and in the Chicago days he would warm up by playing classical pieces. He ended up eighth in his freshman class, with a Grade Point Average of 3.18 (no grade inflation in those days...)

Other things happened in college. He had a dream in which he was summoned by robed figures. They admonished him to keep inside a narrow beam of light, and all traveled upwards until they reached their destination -- the planet Jupiter. Sonny Blount confided this to his diary; unfortunately one of his classmates discovered the passage and read it out loud to the other guys in the dorm. After he became Sun Ra, he spoke of this experience many times -- and in a completely matter-of-fact way.

For the next ten years, he led the Sonny Blount Orchestra. Its partisans regarded it as the top Swing band in Alabama. Without refighting any old battles, let's just say it was a serious competitor to Fess Whatley's aggregations. The Whatley bands played mostly for White audiences, the Blount band almost exclusively for Black audiences. (Supposedly their only gig in front of a White audience took place in Cullman, Alabama -- they were scared to death the entire night, because Cullman was a center of Ku Klux Klan activity.)

Sonny's audiences wanted blues, pop tunes, and the hottest Swing arrangements (judging from what the Arkestra played in the 1970s and 1980s, these would have included scores by Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and Jimmy Lunceford, but of course there were many others he never felt like reviving). He was in the habit of transcribing arrangements off the radio (sometimes with the help of a recording device -- most likely this was a Dictaphone). When Fletcher Henderson or Duke Ellington came to town, he would put his recorder right on the bandstand. Clad in tunic and sandals, he would walk for blocks -- right through the middle of a White neighborhood -- to a local music store, where he would pull out music paper and pencil and quickly copy any sheet music that appealed to him.

Territory bands couldn't count on recording then (though the Society Troubadours did manage one session after Sonny had left the band). Alabama's top musicians had little chance of making it onto wax unless they moved to Chicago or New York. No one alive today has direct evidence of what the Sonny Blount band sounded like. There's one surviving publicity photo of the band, and Sunny had only a Xerox of that in his possession. And though Sunny would rattle off the names of Alabama musicians in later interviews, it's hard to tell from what he said who was actually in his band. We do have some idea, though, who played in the last Sonny Blount Orchestra, a 12 piece aggregration. Walter Miller, trumpet; Nat Atkins, trombone; George "Jarhead" Woodruff, alto sax; Frank Adams, alto sax; Joe Alexander, tenor sax; Warren Parham, also in the sax section; Ivory Williams, bass; and Fletcher Myatt, drums and vocals. Most of these musicians are now in the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.

There was one significant interruption in all of this musical activity. In October 1942 the local Draft Board came calling. Sonny Blount declared himself a Conscientious Objector, but during a war in which there was little tolerance for COs, the answers he gave on his questionnaire displeased the authorities. He spent five weeks in jail in Jasper, Alabama, then was sent to a Civilian Public Service Camp in a place called Marienville, in the boondocks of Northwestern Pennsylvania. But he didn't stay long; by the end of March 1943, he was out on a physical disability discharge, because he had a hernia. In later years, Sun Ra would say that a big band was the opposite of an army; it was a group of men who came together, not to kill, but for a constructive purpose. Sonny's misadventures with the Selective Service System could not have helped his popularity with Alabama musicians. Many already considered him weird; now they could also indict him as unpatriotic.

One transition in his career about which we can safely say that "cosmic forces" were not in control took place in January 1946, when Sonny, fed up with segregation and lack of musical opportunities, bought a one-way train ticket to Chicago. He was soon out on the road in a combo led by alto saxophonist Jimmy Jackson. For three or four months they backed R&B singer Wynonie Harris at Club Zanzibar in Nashville. An unlikely setting, maybe, but Harris was already growing in popularity and a small local label called Bullet saw a chance to capitalize. Harris and his combo (with the old fashioned rhythm section of piano and drums) made four sides. One of them was Sonny's feature, Dig This Boogie. He'd obviously learned his blues lessons. In fact, he'd developed a few tricks of his own, like deliberately dropping beats and picking them up in the next line.

Sun1. Wynonie (Mr. Blues) Harris with the Jimmie Jackson Orchestra

Krazy Kat KK 783 is a 1983 British reissue LP (by various artists) of items released on the Bullet label; it is titled Nashville Jumps. Route 66 KIX 3 is a Swedish Wynonie Harris reissue LP from 1977 titled Mr. Blues is Coming to Town. In the early 1990s, this collection of 16 Harris tracks was reissued on CD as Route 66 RBD 3 (provenance is unclear, as Allen Welsh points out, because the CD is labeled as having been made in England and in Czechoslovakia). Route 66 KIX 20 is another Wynonie Harris LP collection from 1982 titled Oh Babe. All four titles were reissued in November 1998 on a French CD: Classics 1013, Wynonie Harris: 1945-1947. The Classics CD is the first release to mention Sonny's involvement.

Ra confirmed making these sides in his Cadence interview with Bob Rusch. Thanks to Mark Webber, Chris Trent, Julian Vein, and Tony Collins for information; Jimmie Jackson is mentioned in Hartmut Geerken's 1994 discography. The March date comes from Tom Lord in his Jazz Discography; Tony Collins, in Rock Mr. Blues: The Life and Music of Wynonie Harris, gives March or April-the records were advertised in a trade publication on April 27. Collins' book gives the correct A and B sides, gives complete label information, and points out that no bass player is audible.

In Nashville, Sunny took up with Sir Oliver Bibb, in whose band he returned to Chicago. Oliver Bibb (usually called "Bibbs" in Local 208 documents) was a drummer who led a society band known for dressing up in Revolutionary War Patriot uniforms, complete with wigs. "It fit the kind of music they were playing," he later snorted, but the idea of costuming stuck with him. He was hired for odd jobs with many other leaders, including the barwalking tenor saxophonist Cyril "Cozy" Eggleston. On August 15, 1946, his first contract as a leader was accepted and filed by Musicians Local 208: 4 nights at the Boulevard Lounge, under the name "Sonne Blount." A photo from the same period survives, signed "H. Sonne Blount"; a high-quality reproduction can now be seen in Pathways to Unknown Worlds (p. 22).

That same month, the legendary Fletcher Henderson was working nightly at a large Chicago establishment, the Club DeLisa, with his very last big band. They had been in residence since February. Henderson was never much of an improviser, and by this time he had given up the piano, except for one nightly feature on Stealing Apples, and an occasional second feature on Humoresque. So when Marl Young (an experienced bandleader and arranger, who had already recorded with T-Bone Walker for Rhumboogie) found that his studies in law school failed to mix with the long hours 6 nights a week, and left the band to start his own Sunbeam label, Sonny Blount was there to take his place. Sonny's prowess as an arranger would have been a plus, as the band had to develop numbers for acts in the show, which turned over evey month, and Henderson had lost not only Young but also trumpeter Elisha Hanna, who doubled as his copyist.

Big bands were facing mass extinction and this outfit was not in the forefront of those that remained. Fletcher Henderson had made no musical advances since the mid-1930s, his band had lost much of its popular following, and he couldn't attract star soloists. Though each was invited into the studio infrequently, Fletcher's own brother Horace was making better recordings. Many observers wondered why Fletcher didn't spare himself the aggravation and write arrangements for appreciative, high-paying leaders like Benny Goodman. Judging from World War II era reviews of live performances, and a handful of recordings by this band's California-based predecessor, it had grown rough and strident, lacking the fluid drive of the 1933 and 1934 Henderson bands whose records Sonny had assiduously collected.

During Sonny's tenure at the piano bench, the Henderson band included Charles Gray, Matthew Rucker, Willie Wells, and Lee Trammell in the trumpet section. Charles Gray, the son of Harry Gray who ran Musicians Union Local 208, had previously served in Buster Bennett's combo, recording with Buster for Columbia and Rhumboogie. Willie Wells, one of many Detroit-based members of this band, handled the trumpet solos and was regarded with some ambivalence by the leader because he was a bebopper. Lee Trammell left toward the end of the engagement, and Freddie Webster joined the band for a single night (March 31, 1947), doing a feature on a very modern "Body and Soul" that, in the words of one of the musicians, "turned the DeLisa out." (This was bound to stick in everyone's mind, because the very next night Webster was dead, of a drug overdose. Sunny had no trouble remembering Webster 40 years later.) Howard Callender (the husband of blues singer Lil Green) appears to have finished out the engagement in the fourth trumpet chair. The trombones were Joe Brown (who handled the solos) and Hosea Martin. One of the alto sax chairs was held down by Riley Hampton, who had been in Fletcher's band in 1942-1943 and returned after completing his military service; the other was occupied variously by Bill McCall, Hobart Clardy, or when a substitute was needed, James Scales. Woodrow Key and Otis Finch were on tenor sax, and, as was the custom then, they carried a lot of the solo load. Buddy Conway was on baritone, Ellsworth Liggett on bass, and Jimmy Adams in the drum chair. Baritone crooner George Floyd, who had been with Henderson continuously since 1942, was the band singer. Most of the musicians had joined Henderson in Detroit in January 1945 and had moved to Chicago with Henderson when he took the job in February 1946. Besides Sonny Blount, only Gray, Callender, Scales, Liggett, and Adams were local musicians, all replacements for other musicians who had left the band. (Hampton, of course, would make Chicago his home after the engagement was over, and Otis Finch and Woodrow Key would hang around around for a while).

Sonny's job was to interpret other people's material. The band couldn't handle the "new kind of syncopation" in his orchestrations of Dear Old Southland and I Should Care; after that, Sonny kept his arrangements to himself. Nonetheless, Sun Ra always reminisced about his stay in the band with obvious pride. And though it may not have advanced his musical conception, it solidified his ideas about entertainment.

At the Club DeLisa, the Henderson band's primary responsibility was to back singers and floor shows. The club featured top entertainers in Chicago: singer Lurlean Hunter, who was resident at the club from 1944 to 1948, blues vocalist Little Miss Cornshucks, impressionist and singer George Kirby, and a standup blues singer named Jo Jo Adams, who was renowned for his wardrobe of outrageously colored tuxedos. There were tap dancers like the Four Step Brothers and Cozy Cole's Drum Dancers. The extravagant entertainments that the Arkestra became known for in the 1970s, with their light shows and their corps of singers, dancers, tumblers, even fire-eaters, had roots of a more traditional kind.

The Henderson stint ended on May 18, 1947, after which the leader quietly departed to the West Coast, leaving most of his band members high and dry. Sonny had no trouble keeping himself busy. During this period he backed R&B singer Lil Green, whose husband Howard Callender had been a bandmate in the Henderson orchestra. Sonny got into clashes with Callender over religion and philosophy, but he did make the acquaintance of a young drummer from Montclair, New Jersey named Thomas Hunter, usually known as "Bugs."

In the Fall of 1948, Sonny Blount got an opportunity to work with Coleman Hawkins for a couple of weeks. He also began an association with jazz violinist Stuff Smith.

Sun2. Sonny Blount with Coleman Hawkins and Stuff Smith

Sun Ra often described a gig with Coleman Hawkins in 1948 in a club on the North Side of Chicago; Gene Wright confirms that Sonny Blount played with Hawk and suggests that this took place at an after-hours club. Hawk was in town to play at the Blue Note, a club in the Loop (downtown Chicago); his contract with that establishment was accepted and filed on September 16, according to the Board meeting minutes of Local 208. According to Danny Ray Thompson in an interview during the WKCR Sun Ra Festival (April 1987), a tape was made and may still be extant. Tommy Hunter placed the date around the end of 1948. Sonny wrote an arrangement of "I'll Remember April" that Hawk couldn't play; Hawkins confirmed this in an interview.

In October 1948, Sonny became the music director of a successful medium-sized band. Bassist Gene Wright, at the tender of age of 23, was simultaneously running a big band and a 10 or 11 piece aggregration called the Dukes of Swing (two previous incarnations of the Dukes had been in operation in 1943 and 1946). For a while, the big band was upstairs in the Pershing Ballroom while the Dukes held the gig at the Beige Room (as the basement club in the Pershing Hotel was then known). During most of the engagement, the Dukes worked with a vocal-instrumental quartet called the Dozier Boys/ Sonny composed or arranged the Dukes' entire book. Many of these pieces were of a strictly functional nature (floor shows again) but their theme number was a suite based on the theme from Spellbound, an ambitious work by composer Miklos Rozsa. If only we were lucky enough to have that on record....

The engagement with the Dukes did bring Sonny some recording work, first as session pianist for the Dozier Boys, then with the entire band. Both sesssions were done for the fledgling Aristocrat label. It was the Doziers who came to the company's attention first, courtesy of bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon.

Accompaniment really by the Dozier Boys and Sonny Blount. From the collection of Tom Kelly.

Sun3. Andrew Tibbs and "The Dozier Boys" with Sax Mallard's Combo [sic] / Andy Tibbs and The Dozier Boys^

Universal Recording, Chicago, late November, 1948

U-7160	In a Traveling Mood (Tibbs) [Listen to In a Traveling Mood]	Aristocrat 1105A, Classics 5028 [CD]
U-7161	In Every Man's Life (Mallard-Austin)^	Aristocrat 1106-A, Classics 5028 [CD]
U7162	I Want to Be Loved	unissued
U7163	This Is Always	unissued

Aristocrat 1105 was a 78 rpm single, released in December 1948 (it was reviewed in Cash Box on February 12, 1949). Aristocrat 1106 was released in July 1949. The unissued items are as identified by Leadbitter, Fancourt, and Pelletier, Blues Records 1943-1970 L-Z (published 1994). The usual caveats about data in the Aristocrat master book apply. The two issued sides got their first reissue ever in February 2002, on Classics 5028, Andrew Tibbs 1947-1951.

We identified the lineup by ear, with help from Benny Cotton and Cornell Wiley. Though the label to Aristocrat 1105A credits Andrew Tibbs and "The Dozier Boys" with Sax Mallard's Combo, in fact Sax Mallard's group appeared only on the flip side ("The Holidays Are Over"). There are no horns on the A side, just the Doziers harmonizing and playing their instruments. The Doziers used a session pianist for dates like this; Wiley and Cotton have stated that Sonny Blount helped out on this occasion. On "Traveling" and "Every Man's," Benny Cotton shares the lead vocals with Tibbs. On Aristocrat 1106, the singer is referred to as "Andy Tibbs." Sax Mallard's band did back Tibbs at a separate session shortly before this one, which provided Aristocrat 1105B and 1106-B.

According to Jay R. Monroe, Aristocrat 1105 has been reissued on a bootleg "repro." The "repro" uses a facsimile of the Aristocrat label, but it is a 45 rpm single. Which is all the buyer needs to know: all genuine Aristocrats were 78s.

A Cash Box advertisement for Aristocrat 1105, from the March 5, 1949 issue. Courtesy of Dan Kochakian.

According to Cornell Wiley, the session with the Dukes of Swing followed the Tibbs session. If this is so, perhaps Aristocrat wanted to remake "Big Time Baby." Of the other three tracks from this session, two are instrumentals by the Dukes, and on "Music Goes Round and Round," the Doziers sing one opening chorus and let the band take over.

Sun4. The Dozier Boys and Eugene Wright / Eugene Wright and the Dukes of Swing

United Broadcasting Studios, Chicago, early December, 1948

UB-9545	Big Time Baby (Mallard) -2	Aristocrat 3002-A, Classics 5028 [CD]
UB 9546	Pork 'n Beans (Blount)	Aristocrat 11001
UB 9547	Dawn Mist (Blount)	Aristocrat 11001
UB-9548	Music Goes Round and Round (Farley-Riley-Hodgson) -1, 2	Aristocrat 3002-B

The session was split between two vocal tracks and two instrumental tracks. The instrumentals were apparently composed by Sonny Blount. Besides Gene Wright's testimony that Sonny was in charge of the band's book, we have transparently bogus composer credits: Leonard Chess claiming "Pork 'n Beans," and "Dawn Mist" being ascribed to one "Crawfish."

Aristocrat 3002 was a 78 rpm single, released in September 1949; see the Aristocrat discography. Personnel of the Dukes of Swing came from Gene Wright (as interviewed, many years apart, by the late Otto Flückiger and by John Szwed). According to the Szwed interview, the Dukes of Swing were a 11-piece band and everyone was present at this recording session. Sax Mallard is credited as the composer of "Big Time Baby" on the original label; the composer of "Music Goes Round and Round" is given simply as "Riley."

Eugene Teague brought his guitar, which is briefly audible at the beginning of "Music Goes Round and Round." Bill Minor sings the lead on "Big Time Baby."

The UB numbers (which were apparently never written down in the Aristocrat company files, leading every discographer until very recently to confuse this session with U7156-U7159) indicate United Broadcasting Studios. Consequently "Big Time Baby" from this session (matrix mislisted as U7159) was reissued in February 2002 on Classics 5028, Andrew Tibbs 1947-1951. (Andrew Tibbs is, of course, not on this session--or on the previous one.)

Aristocrat used United Broadcasting occasionally. Wright says the session took place not long before he left town to join the Count Basie band (an event that took place around Christmas of 1948). The band broke up when he went on tour with Basie (who had asked him to substitute for Walter Page on at least one previous occasion). Wright returned to Chicago in the middle of 1949, going on to a long career working with various leaders, most famously Dave Brubeck, but it was the end of the road for the Dukes.

This 1973 LP included the oldest surviving recording made on Sonny Blount's tape machine. From the collection of Chris Trent.

On his very first tape machine, Sonny recorded Stuff Smith and himself playing in his tiny apartment at 5414 South Prairie Avenue. They performed a duet featuring the Solovox, a primitive electronic instrument that Sonny had picked up back in 1941, while still in Birmingham. Sonny had a thing about purple (he thought people would be healthier if they ate more purple food). He released Deep Purple nearly a quarter century later on his Saturn label, and the tune remained in his repertoire for the rest of his career. It would be featured on his very last recording session, when he accompanied Billy Bang for Soul Note in 1992.

Sun5. Sonny Blount and Stuff Smith

Deep Purple

Saturn 485 (released in 1973) was an LP titled Deep Purple (on some copies, Dreams Come True). The artists on this collection were billed as "Sun Ra and his Arkestra"; on some copies, "featuring Stuff Smith on Violin" was added. The LP had printed white labels with a Chicago address for Saturn Records, but no covers were printed. Consequently, there are many cover varieties, consisting of various generic Sun Ra LP sleeves, many of them hand decorated by members of All of Side A of this LP was reissued on Evidence 22014, Sound Sun Pleasure!!, a CD from 1992.

The Solovox was an early electronic keyboard instrument (already in Sonny's possession as early as 1941; it can be seen attached to his piano in a photograph that was reprinted in John F. Szwed's book Space Is the Place). When asked for a session date, members of the Arkestra told Bob Rusch “pre 1953,” by which they meant before John Gilmore joined the band; previous discographies have generally said 1953. However, Anthony Barnett, author of Desert Sands: The Recordings and Performances of Stuff Smith, says that Smith probably left Chicago by the end of 1952, and had relocated to New York by February 1953 at the latest. Tommy Hunter recalled recording this get-together (supposedly, just one tune because Sonny was running out of tape) in 1948 or 1949. Sonny Blount had traveled to Cleveland earlier in 1948 to purchase an early model recorder that used paper tapes.

Other gigs were less uplifting. In mid-1949, Sonny and Tommy Hunter began playing in trios in Calumet City, a southern Chicago suburb, outside the territory of Local 208, known mainly for its strip joints. Few musicians would have been thrilled with the setting or the nature of the work, which was Sonny's major source of income for some time. Worse yet, the girls were White and the Mob, which controlled the clubs, dictated that Black bands had to play behind a curtain. More rewarding work came from the Club DeLisa, which he retained his connection with for several years. He wrote arrangements for the medium-sized Red Saunders band. Some musicians recall him spelling for Earl Washington in the Saunders band, but Saunders doesn't seem to have liked his playing and such opportunities were infrequent at best.

Sun6. "Red" Saunders and Orchestra

Chicago, c. December 1948

SU-180	Trust in Me (Wever-Schwartz-Ager) [GF voc] -1	Supreme 1523-B
SU-181	Synthesis (Ventura) [ens voc] -1	Supreme 1523-A
SU-?	unidentified title ["Synthesis"] -1	Night Train International CD 7027
SU-?	Legs Gettin' Bigger and Bigger [prob. GK, ens voc]	Night Train International CD 7013

Supreme 1523 was a 78 rpm single, released in 1949. Our basic information comes from Leadbitter, Fancourt, and Pelletier, Blues Records 1943-1970, Vol. 2 (1994 edition). Thanks to Anthony Barnett for pointing out this listing, which doesn't mention the vocalist on "Trust in Me" or the band scatting on "Synthesis." The Supreme labels give George Floyd's name. Floyd was a member of Fletcher Henderson band that was in residence at the Club DeLisa from Feburary 1946 through May 1947; he is advertised in the Chicago Defender of December 18, 1948 on the bill for a DeLisa show that included Red Saunders' band.

Balladeer George Floyd (born in Pelham, Georgia, on July 17, 1912) came to Chicago from Los Angeles with Fletcher Henderson in 1946. Floyd implied in an interview with Charles Walton that all of his sides for Supreme were made in LA; however, there is no evidence that the Red Saunders band ever traveled to the West Coast, and such a trip in 1948 would have required a substitute band at the DeLisa for at least a week. Floyd did travel to the West Coast later when he recorded four more sides for Supreme (matrix numbers SU-210 through SU-213) with a small group led by Henderson; Lord gives February to April 1949 as the date and LA as the location, which make sense because the musicians were regulars on the LA scene. When his style of ballad singing went out of fashion in the early 1950s, George Floyd took a job with a Cadillac dealership. He died in Chicago on April 16, 2000.

Leadbitter et al.'s listings for Red Saunders, like other mainstream discographies, do not give arranger credits. They also make some noticeable mistakes. Fip Ricard is called "Flip Richard" and John Avant goes as "Joe Avant" throughout the Leadbitter entries. Ricard is generally referred to as "Flip" in discographies, though he was actually known as Fip, according to his interview in Jazz Monthly, February 1964.

Chris Trent believes that "Trust in Me" was arranged by Sonny Blount, and rlc concurs. The arrangement is very much like the arrangements for "Hour of Parting" and other ballads from Sun Ra's famous Arkestra session of March 6, 1959.

"Synthesis" is an orthodox bebop number, written by Charlie Ventura during his "bop for the people" phase. The evidence for Sonny Blount's involvement lies in the meticulous arch form: vocal ensemble-alto sax solo-trumpet solo-contrasting instrumental ensemble-tenor sax solo-baritone sax solo-vocal ensemble. Compare "Super Blonde," as recorded by Sun Ra's Arkestra probably on June 16, 1956.

The piece called "Synthesis" on 1995 on Night Train International CD 7027, Music from and Inspired by Devil in a Blue Dress, is an entirely different performance of a different piece! (The Night Train CD is a various-artists collection, issued in 1995; the other tracks are by Jimmy Witherspoon, Lowell Fulson, Johnny Otis, Charles Brown, Lloyd Glenn, Frantic Faye Thomas, etc.) The second "Synthesis" is also a bop instrumental, but here the opening is martial trumpets answered by the drums, then a chorus led by the tenor and baritone saxes, with dissonant flourishes from the piano on the bridge. The second chorus is mostly call and response between muted trumpets and the saxes. The third chorus features a baritone sax solo by Mac Easton. The fourth is a trumpet-dominated ensemble with more dissonant piano sprinkles; the final eight bars are a sax-led ensemble that more than slightly resembles 1956 Sun Arkestra scoring!), then a brief muted trumpet solo (probably by Fip Ricard), then a pretty typical bebop tag.

"Legs Gettin' Bigger and Bigger" was included in Night Train International CD 7013, Swing Time Jive, a various artists collection derived from the Down Beat, Swing Time, Exclusive, and Superior labels. Other artists include Ray Charles, Joe Liggins, Mabel Scott, and the Basin Street Boys. The CD was released in 1995.

The Night Train notes claim that "Legs" was recorded in Los Angeles, but they also claim that the dates with Bunky Redding were cut in LA, so they should not be taken seriously. Presumably "Legs" is from the same session as the others. There is no evidence that it was released at the time. The lead vocalist on this jivey number is definitely not George Floyd. The best bet would be George Kirby, a comic who did impressions at the Club DeLisa. Kirby was actually a good singer; fortunately for those of us who never saw him live, he recorded one vocal that is actually credited on the label ("Ice Man Blues" with Tom Archia). "Legs" includes a trombone solo (probably by Johnny Avant) and an alto sax solo by Porter Kilbert. It has a typical smooth Saunders arrangement, with no obvious signs of Sonny Blount.

Sun7. Dorothy Donegan acc. by "Red" Saunders and his Orchestra

Columbia Studio, Chicago, May or early June 1950

CCO 5156	D. D. D. [Dorothy Donegan's Doghouse] (Saunders-R. Alan)		Columbia 30223
CCO 5158	Ridin' Boogie (Donegan-J. Todd)		Columbia 30223

Before we put it on our Red Saunders page, this session had never been mentioned in a jazz discography. Dan Kochakian owns a copy of Columbia 30223, a 78-rpm single issued around September 23, 1950, according to First Pressings.. Obviously, the recording date was slightly earlier than the next Saunders session. Personnel identified by ear; there is a baritone sax solo (definitely Mac Easton) on "D.D.D."; "Ridin' Boogie" includes a tenor solo (Leon Washington) and a muted trombone solo (this must be by "Booby" Floyd as Johnny Avant was into J. J. Johnson). The arrangement is consistent with Sonny Blount's work at the time, and Sun Ra later said in interviews that he admired Dorothy Donegan's playing. It is not known whether additional unissued titles were recorded at this session--but that missing matrix number (CCO 5157) is tempting.

Adding interest to the next session is the presence of Oran "Hot Lips" Page, the famous Swing soloist and blues singer (1908 - 1954). Lips was in Chicago in March 1950, when his band headlined at the Regal Theater (1 week contract posted with Local 208 on March 2). On April 6, he posted a four-week contract with the Brass Rail (a major jazz establishment in the Loop.) We're not quite sure what he was doing in town in June, when he sat in for Fip Ricard, but he was under contract to Columbia at the time, so it may have been the record company's idea. Unfortunately, Lips got no solos or vocal features.

Sun8. Red Saunders and his Orchestra

Columbia Studio, Chicago, June 15, 1950

CCO 5170	Blow, "Mr. Low-Blow" [JW, ens voc] -1 (Saunders-D. Williams)	Columbia 30218
CCO 5171	Sharecropper Boogie [LB voc]	Columbia [unissued]
CCO 5172	CHI [Chicago] [JW voc] -1	Epic E3K 48912 [CD]
CCO 5173	Lyin' Girl Blues [JW voc] (Saunders-L. Washington-J. Williams) -1	Columbia 30218, Epic E3K 48912 [CD]

Columbia 30218 was a 78 rpm single released in 1950. Little Miss Sharecropper was working the Club DeLisa with Red in June 1950, and there is a mention of this session in Billboard for July 1950. Epic E3K 48912 was a collection on 3 CDs released in 1993 and titled The OKeh Rhythm & Blues Story 1949-1957. Session information from Leadbitter, Fancourt, and Pelletier with some help from the Epic booklet. Leadbitter et al. give the matrix numbers as 5120-5123 but on the original labels of Columbia 30218, the matrices are given as 5170 and 5173. Lord lists this session (with the correct matrix numbers) as though it was led by Hot Lips Page!

According to Chris Trent, the voicings on "CHI" and "Lyin' Girl Blues" (especially in the saxes) indicate that Sonny Blount arranged them. In rlc's opinion, "Blow Mr. Low-Blow," though more basic R&B with a long featured solo by Mac Easton, could also be Sonny's handiwork. "Sharecropper Boogie" remains unissued and is unavailable for examination.

Columbia would use singer "Jumpin'" Joe Williams on many of Red's sessions for Columbia and OKeh. Born Joseph Goreed in Cordele, Georgia, on December 12, 1918, Joe came to Chicago with his family as a teenager. After gaining experience in a gospel singing group, he changed his name to Joe Williams and used his smooth baritone primarily in ballad singing. In a questionnaire for one of Leonard Feather's jazz encyclopedias (the material is now at the Institute for Jazz Studies in Newark, NJ; our thanks to John Szwed for checking the files there), Red Saunders took credit for encouraging Joe Williams to sing the blues. Williams had worked many a night at the Club DeLisa with Red's backing before Columbia saw fit to include him on a Red Saunders recording session. Even though Columbia and OKeh did not reap any major commercial success from the combination (Joe did not hit the big time until he went on the road with Count Basie at the end of 1954), the decision made perfect sense artistically.

Sun9. Miss Sharecropper

Chicago, December 1950 or January 1951

NSC668	Take out Some Time -1	National 9153, Savoy SJL2256
NSC669	I've Tried -1	National 9151, Savoy SJL2256
NSC670	How Long -2	National 9151
NSC671	I Want to Rock -2	National 9153, Savoy SJL2256

LaVern Baker was born Delores LaVern Baker in Chicago. When she began to hit it big, she was married to Eugene Williams and was going under the name Delores Williams. She was first mentioned in advertisements on September 28 and October 19, 1946, when the Defender ran ads for the Timber Tap Lounge (217 East 31st), proprietor George Woods, with the Timber Tap Two as featured artists; the undercard consisted of a shake dancer and "Little Miss Sharecropper." LaVern Baker said that she signed a contract with the Club DeLisa in November 1946, and there is no reason to doubt this. The first mention of her name in an advertisement for that club was on February 8, 1947, when she was playing in the Favorites of 1947 show, under the name of "Midget LaVern" (actually spelled "Laverine," but that is well within the confidence limits for nightclub ads of the era). She was backed by the Fletcher Henderson band, with Sonny Blount at the piano.

In a Brookmont Lounge ad for August 7, 1948, she was listed as "Sharecopper, Queen of the Blues." On February 25, 1949, she cut her first recording; she sang "I Wonder Baby" on a session led by Eddie "Sugarman" Penigar (Victor 22-0016). She was listed on the label as Little Miss Sharecropper and in the company files as "D. L. McMurley" (see our Sax Mallard discography for details). On April 23, 1949, she was referred to as "Little Miss Share Cropper, Song Stylist" (the handle was blatantly patterned after Little Miss Cornshucks) in a Blue Dahlia ad. There were adverts for her in the Chicago Defender, all as Little Miss Sharecropper, pretty regularly thereafter up to the Fall of 1951: for instance, a breakfast dance at the Miramar Ballroom, December 24, 1949 (with Wardell Gray's Sextet); at the Club DeLisa on August 12, 1950, at Ralph's Club on October 21, 1950, at Joe's Rendezvous Lounge in February 1951, at the Indiana Theatre on September 15, 1951 (a midnight "Battle of Blues" with Memphis Minnie), and at the Crown Propeller Lounge, where she was the "new headliner" on September 22. She appears to have moved to Detroit after that point. She made one recording with the Detroit-based band Maurice King and his Wolverines (March 1951 for OKeh, supposedly in New York City; it was released on OKeh 6800, and on that occasion she went as Bea Baker); after that she began performing as LaVern Baker. In 1952 she recorded with Todd Rhodes.

Because of her later Detroit connections, some sources have incorrectly given Detroit as the location for this session and ca. 1950 as the date. Lord says ca. late 1950 and specifies no location; he renders "I've Tried" as "I'll Try."

The personnel were identified by ear. This is clearly the Red Saunders unit of the period. Porter Kilbert is featured on "Take out Some Time." Mac Easton solos on "I Want to Rock" and "How Long." Earl Washington does the Roosevelt Sykes thing on "I've Tried" and boogies on "I Want to Rock." The sax section writing on "Take out Some Time" (almost evanescent) and "I've Tried" suggests Sonny's involvement. It is unfortunate that "How Long" was never reissued, as it has prominent drumming from Red and concludes with a drum solo.

National 9151 and 9153 were 78-rpm singles released in 1951. The label was faltering at the time--its only known release after 9153 would be 9158. Savoy SJL2256 was an LP released in the early 1980s, a various artists collection titled Ladies Sing the Blues, Volume 2, in the Roots of Rock'n'Roll Series, #12. Our thanks to James Wolf for information about the Savoy LP.

All National matrix numbers were in chronological sequence; NSC650 and 651 came from a Kate Smith date on November 27, 1950.

Some accounts claim that around 1950 Sunny became seriously depressed. In any event, he was giving a lot of thought to non-musical matters: "I was busy with spirit things," he once said about this period. "I wasn't even really here." His concerns about racism and man's inhumanity to man were coming together with his extensive readings from books about the occult, his analysis of the hidden meanings to be found in the Bible, and old anthropological speculations to the effect that Egypt was the source of all civilization and we are all "children of the sun."

Sonny Blount was in his mid-30s now. By that age a great many jazz musicians have already said whatever they're going to say. He had played piano, been in charge of the band book, even led his own bands. He had steady musical employment and did a fair amount of arranging on the side. Some musicians considered him a weirdo. Others saw him as a studious type who said little and spent a lot of time at the piano (Gene Wright compared him to John Lewis). His compositions had always kept up with the latest developments in Swing, but pieces like Fission and Thermodynamics weren't as futuristic as their titles made them sound. When bebop came along, Sonny listened carefully and took what he wanted from it. Junior Mance recalls, for instance, that Sonny was the first pianist in Chicago to play like Bud Powell. But while there are traces of the Powell influence on Sunny's 1956 recordings (most notably "Urnack" and "Future"), it's a lot easier to hear Fats Waller than Bud Powell in his later playing. Sunny was also paying close attention to the eccentric local pianist Willie Jones (1920 - 1977). Jones had evolved a sound about halfway between Milt Buckner and Cecil Taylor; he was known as "The Piano Wrecker" because of his imposing size and pulverizing attack on the instrument. Still, it was hard to identify a Sonny Blount sound. His earliest appearances in the Chicago recording studios would not make anyone think of either Bud Powell or Willie Jones.

While countless working musicians have been satisfied with these kinds of results, Sonny had bigger goals. In 1950 or 1951, he started a band to play his own, frankly far-out music. He called it the Space Trio: one charter member was Laurdine "Pat" Patrick (1929 - 1991), who played alto and baritone sax. The drum chair was occupied on some occasions by Tommy Hunter. On other occasions it was taken by Robert Barry, who would soon emerge as a leading bebop drummer in town.

Sun9a. The Space Trio

"Treasure Hunt" is an exploratory piece, about 2 1/2 minutes long. It was recorded on Sunny's first tape machine and bears the titles "Treasure Hunt" and "c. 1950" in his handwriting. Obviously, the title and date were attached later; Sun Ra like to keep his tapes underdocumented, even tearing off leaders.

"Treasure Hunt" got its first public performance on May 22, 1995, on a WKCR-FM memorial broadcast. Our thanks to Charles Blass for information. Musicans were identified by ear.

Sonny fell in with a secret society on the South Side of Chicago. It preached an unusual variety of Black Nationalism, admonishing Black men to recognizethe importance of outer space if they were to better their lot in the future. From the sparse and self-serving accounts we've been given, we don't know how much Sonny learned from the other members and how much they picked up from him. We do know that Alton Abraham, who was to become the Arkestra's manager and head of Sun Ra's record label, was affiliated with this group, as were his brother Artis, his friend James Bryant, Lawrence Allen, tenor saxophonist T. S. Mims, Sr., and others who would later provide financial backing for recordings. The secret society eventually developed more public manifestations called Thmei Research and Saturn Research. Sound was within the purview of Saturn Research. Thmei was concerned with theosophy and the occult.

Abraham and his friends may have had celestial yearnings but they were a rough bunch. Musicians from that period appreciate Abraham's effectiveness at getting bookings, but many thought he was a gangster. It's not hard to understand why, when we learn that on one occasion a trumpet player showed up drunk and messed up one of Sunny's rehearsals. Lawrence Allen took care of the problem by shoving a loaded pistol under the musician's nose and telling him, "Time to go home and read your Bible."

Sun10. Red Saunders & his Orchestra / Red Saunders & his Orch. ^

Columbia Studios, Chicago, April 20, 1951

CCO 5251	Stop Pretty Baby Stop (Lovett-L. Washington-Saunders) [JW, ens voc] -1	OKeh 6801
CCO 5252	Mistreatin' Woman Blues (Saunders-Washington) ^ [JW voc] -1	OKeh 7061, Moonshine LP 114
CCO 5253	Week Day Blues [JW voc] (J. Woods-Saunders) -1	OKeh 6834, Moonshine LP 114, Epic E3K 48912 [CD]
CCO 5254	4 A.M. (L. Washington-M. Easton-Saunders) -1	OKeh 6801

OKeh 6801 was a single, released on 45, 78, and 33(!) rpm. (An advert in Cash Box, July 21, 1951, which kicked off the revived OKeh label indicates that OKeh 6800-6804 were all released on 33 1/3 rpm singles. This experiment was presumably terminated in a hurry...) OKeh 6801 was was scheduled for release on June 4, 1951 and apparently came out in early July (it was one of the 5 leadoff singles for the newly revived imprint). "Stop" was the A side, "4 A. M." the B side. (The title on the label was just "4 A.M.," not "4 A.M. Blues" as previous discographies have it.) OKeh 6834 was a single, released on 45 and 78 rpm, probably also in 1951. OKeh 7061 was a 45 rpm single, released around September 10, 1955; "Mistreatin' Woman" was the B side.

Moonshine 114 was a Dutch various artists LP titled Leapin' on Lenox. Epic E3K 48912 was a collection of 3 CDs released in 1993 and entitled The OKeh Rhythm & Blues Story 1949-1957. Session information from Leadbitter, Fancourt, and Pelletier, 1994 edition, and the Epic booklet.

According to Chris Trent, the chord voicings and treatment of rhythm on "Week Day Blues" indicate Sonny Blount's involvement. "Stop Pretty Baby Stop" and "4 A. M. Blues" have comparable touches, as does "Mistreatin' Woman Blues." "Mistreatin'" has no horn solos but it does include some drum breaks for Red.

Sun11. Red Saunders and his Orchestra / Red Saunders & his Orch.^

OKeh 6856 was a single released around April 5, 1952; "Gentle Lover" was the A side. OKeh 6862 was a single released in February 1952 on both 78 and 45 rpm; "Boot 'em Up" was the B side. (On the strength of "Hambone," the A-side which was Red's only hit record, there was also a Canadian release.) OKeh 6834 was a single released on 78 and 45 rpm, probably in late 1951. OKeh 6914 was a single released on 45 and 78 rpm, probably in late 1952. OKeh 7061 was a 45 rpm single released around September 10, 1955.

Although the booklet to the Epic box set claims to include an alternate take of "Hey Bartender," all releases have used the same take. The Epic reissues give the title as "Hey Bartender Buy That Man a Drink" but the short form is what appeared on the original OKeh release.

Surely the weirdest reissue of the title was on the B side of a red vinyl EP, Memories Record Prevue MEP-1003. It was incorrectly credited there to "Big Joe Williams & The Red Saunders Orch."; its sidemate was "Hillybilly Blues" by Eddie Clearwater. The A side contained the Mercury and Watch versions of "Bald Head" by Roy Byrd (better known as Professor Longhair).

Epic E3K 48912 was a collection of 3 CDs released in 1993 and titled The OKeh Rhythm & Blues Story 1949-1957. According to the Epic booklet, the version of "Hey Bartender" released on CD is an alternate take. Columbia CK40799 is a various-artists CD released in 1996 under the title Columbia Jazz Masterpieces--The 1950s: The Singers; other performers include Hot Lips Page, Dolores Hawkins, Babs Gonzalez, and Louis Armstrong (information from the online All-Music Guide).

Other sources of information on this session: Leadbitter et al., 1994 edition, a doowop "repro" catalog provided by Anthony Barnett, and the Epic booklet.

Leadbitter left out the last two items from this session, both of which featured June Davis. Jepsen did include her sides, and our session information about them is from that source. To our knowledge, June Davis never worked the Club DeLisa. Our first evidence of her comes from 1940, when she worked with a rehearsal band led by pianist Frank Melrose. Three privately recorded sides survive with her vocals on them; they were not commercially relased until 2006. Of these, "Bluesiana" and "Have You Ever Felt That Way" are obvious imitations of Billie Holiday. "If You'se a Viper," a duet with Melrose, is in a lighter, more pop-oriented style much closer to her recorded work with Red Saunders. June Davis was singing at El Grotto (64th and Cottage Grove, the predecessor to the Beige Room and Budland) in December 1946. She did not record again until this Red Saunders session.

"Last Night's Party" is early rock and roll with minimal writing, but according to ChrisTrent "the bottom-heavy sound of the band" suggests it may be Sonny Blount's work; rlc concurs. The piece shows distinct and early New Orleanian influence and somewhat resembles Sun Ra's 1958 composition "Great Balls of Fire." "Hey Bartender" incorporates a favorite Ra riff drawn from "Saint Louis Blues" and the rhythm bears Ra fingerprints as well. "Boot 'em Up" is a fluent but obvious imitation of the Basie band, circa 1938; but note the blatting trombone pedal under the ensemble, just before the false ending. Sonny could have lifted this feature from the Red Allen jump band of the 1940s with Don Stovall, whom he is known to have admired. "Sugar Bounce" mixes in some bop licks, and commits outright thievery from "Jumpin' with Symphony Sid"; note the sax ensemble as the piece fades. Sonny's involvement in "Gentle Lover" seems clear; "J. D. Blues" is an informal blues, and there his contributions, if any, would be harder to trace.

A Cash Box advertisement for "Hambone," from February 1952.

Red scores his only international release. From the collection of Robert L. Campbell

Sun12. Red Saunders & his Orch. with Dolores Hawkins & The Hambone Kids* / Red Saunders & his Orchestra

Columbia Studio, Chicago, January 18, 1952

CCO 5314	Hambone* (Saunders-L. Washington-H. McGrier) -1	OKeh 6862, Columbia [Can] C-1926
CCO 5314 [alt.], JZSP 59257	Hambone* (Saunders-Washington-McGrier) -1	OKeh 7166, OKeh 7282, Epic LP 22125, Epic EG 37649, Edsel ED 149, Edsel ED CD 149, Century CD #
CCO 5315	La Raspa (trad.)	OKeh 6884

OKeh 6862 was a single issued on 45 rpm and 78 rpm in February 1952 (large display ads in Billboard and Cash Box showed the Kids performing in front of Red and his drums). "Hambone" was the A side. The originally issued take of "Hambone" included Dolores Hawkins' whistling but lacked her vocal interjections; it also included a brief passage for the full band and a tenor sax solo. The Kids' rhythmic practice is "hamboning" or "patting juba": slapping various body parts as a substitute for drumming. Dee Clark, as Sammy McGrier pointed out in Pruter's book, also stamped with his heel on the 2nd and 4th beats. Horace McGrier Sr. wrote two verses for the song, though he is not credited on the label (shame, shame).

"Hambone" was Red Saunders' only hit: it went to #20 on the R&B charts for one week, and according to an October 1952 article in Billboard, "OKeh Records hit the 80,000 figure with the Red Saunders waxing." Red's comment to Art Hodes was succinct: "It got us this house--the down payment." The single sold well enough to justify a Canadian release (we're pretty sure it's the only one that Saunders ever got); on the Canadian 78 the matrix number for "Hambone" carries suffix -2A.

What purported to be a straight reissue of "Hambone" appeared as the A side of OKeh 7166 (in 1963) and again on OKeh 7282 (in 1967); both were 45-rpm singles. The occasion for the reissue is made clear on the label to 7166: "As Featured by Sandy Becker on His TV show 'Sandy's Hour'." The JZSP number is the contemporary Columbia master number that appears on the label of 7166. In fact the reissues used an alternate take of "Hambone," running 2:13, in which the Hambone Kids and Dolores Hawkins are accompanied throughout by guitar, bass, and drums only; the rest of the band contributes nothing, except shouts of "Hambone!" at the beginning and end of the piece. Thanks to Dan Ferone for providing label scans of OKeh 7166. Thanks to John McCarthy for pointing out that the reissue of "Hambone" was on OKeh 7282as well as OKeh 7166 as reported in Leadbitter, Fancourt, and Pelletier's blues discography, and for providing a dub of OKeh 7282.

The flip side of both reissue singles was "Rumble Mambo" by Link Wray and the Wraymen, obviously not a Red Saunders number (as erroneously stated in Leadbitter). Our thanks to the online Link Wray discography (http://pages.prodigy.com/cyclops/linkwray.html) for the release dates (Robert Pruter mentions the 1963 reissue of "Hambone" in Doowop: The Chicago Scene).

The coupling of "Hambone" and "Rumble Mambo" (it would be interesting to know the record-company logic behind this...) has caused confusion in the Link Wray camp as well. Jeff Hall points out that a collection of what were supposed to be 16 of Link Wray's late-1950s recordings was issued on in England on Edsel ED 149 [LP] and ED CD 149 in 1989. The collection was titled Link Wray & The Raymen. It included the alternate take of "Hambone" as a Link Wray performance! A subsequent CD collection of Wray material from this period on the Sony label avoided this blunder.

The alternate take was probably used on Epic LP 22125 (a 2-LP set of OKeh Rhythm and Blues released in 1982) and definitely on Epic EG 37649, Okeh Rhythm & Blues (apparently a reissue of this 2-LP set). On a recent bootleg doo-wop "repro" single, "Hambone" appears as the A side (the B side is "Zeke'l Zeke'l" from the next session); the "repro" is billed as derived from OKeh 6862. A 1990s compilation CD, Pop Fifties Vol. 7, includes "Hambone" (in the company of "Cry" by Johnny Ray, "The Twelfth of Never" by Johnny Mathis, and other distinctly non-R&B material); it was issued by Century Records in Canada for use by radio stations. That version of "Hambone" is said to have been taken from OKeh 6862; we have not been able to check the CD.

OKeh 6884 was a single issued on 45 and 78 rpm in May 1952. "La Raspa" was the B side. Chris Trent is sure that Sonny Blount did not arrange "La Raspa," which he describes as "a medley of European and Latin American tunes for which [Sonny] could never have been responsible." Clearly true. "La Raspa" is clumsy march music without swing or convincing Latin rhythm, and the sectional writing is incompetent. "Hambone," on the other hand, is the historical intermediary between the "band vocals" of the Swing era and such numbers as "It's Christmas Time," which Sunny recorded with a group called the Qualities in 1959--as well as Sunny's ubiquitous space chants.

Sun13. Red Saunders & his Orchestra / Red Saunders & his Orch. ^

Columbia Studio, Chicago, April 3, 1952

CCO 5330	Zeke'l Zeke'l (Saunders-Dahl) [HK voc] -1, 2	OKeh 6884
CCO 5331	Piece A-Puddin' (Toombs) ^ [HK voc] -1 [Listen to Piece-A-Puddin']	OKeh 6914
CCO 5332	Portrait of Vintage P. McWorm	OKeh (unissued)

OKeh 6884 was a single, issued on 45 and 78 rpm in May 1952. "Zeke'l Zeke'l" was the A side. "Zeke'l Zeke'l" was reissued on the B side of a bootleg "repro" single with "Hambone" as the A side. OKeh 6914 was a single, released in late 1952 in 78 and 45 rpm. Track and personnel information from Leadbitter et al., who give no vocal credits. An uncredited electric guitar is prominent on "Zeke'l Zeke'l." The hamboning on "Piece-A-Puddin'" occurs only at the beginning.

"Piece A-Puddin'" was probably arranged by Sonny Blount, according to Chris Trent. The writing resembles Ra's arrangement for "The Sun Man Speaks." rlc concurs, citing the "heavy bottom" to the arrangement. Sonny's involvement in "Zeke'l Zeke'l" is also likely. The unissued track has obviously not been checked.

1952 seems to have been a year for name changes. On February 18, Fritz Jones appeared in front of a Cook County judge; he emerged from the courtroom as Ahmad Jamal. Sunny would follow suit 8 months later, proclaiming his vocation: that he was a citizen of Saturn, not of Planet Earth; that he was not human, but rather of an angel race; that he was to serve as the Cosmic Communicator, bringing the Creator's message to benighted Earthlings. On October 20, 1952, he officially changed his name to Le Sony'r Ra -- Ra after the Egyptian sun god, Sony for reasons both heliocentric and mundane, and an extra "r" to bring the total up to a cosmically significant nine letters. This was the name that appeared on his passport. With characteristic modesty, he explained that he went through the legal rigmarole because "Jesus Christ should have registered himself with the authorities. Then he wouldn't have had any trouble". Sun Ra (in earlier days, Le Sun Ra) was technically his stage name.

He deliberately concealed his former life. He would say that he was never really named Herman Blount, that he had always used other names, that the name "didn't have no rhythm" anyhow. He spoke rarely, if at all, about his roots in Birmingham. (However, Local 208 would know him as Herman Blount throughout his stay in Chicago.) In time he would rename his band the Arkestra (a respelling that just happens to include "Ra" both forwards and backwards).

1953 was the year of the arrangements. Sunny was making no commercial recordings of his own, and probably didn't feel that his experimental ensemble was ready to make them. But he was willing now to put his stamp on arrangements written for others, to a degree not previously heard. His name did not appear on a single record label in 1953--in one case the band's didn't either--but Red Saunders was now recording his aggressively "modern" arrangements: "Voodoo Blues," "It's Raining Again," "Summertime." And the opening bars of "Call My Baby" announce, for all who care to hear, that Sun Ra has arrived.

Sun14. Red Saunders & his Orch.

Columbia Studio, Chicago, January 21, 1953

CCO 5400, ZSP 13401	Mambo in Trumpet (Salamanca) [ens grunts]	OKeh 6953
CCO 5401	Honky Tonk Train Blues (Meade Lux Lewis) -1	Columbia/Legacy CK64988 [CD]
CCO 5402, ZSP 13400	Probably (Hampton-Saunders) [JW, ? voc]	OKeh 6953
CCO 5403	Voodoo Blues (Saunders-P. Williams) [JW, ? voc]	Epic E3K 48912 [CD]

OKeh 6953 was a single released in April 1953, in both 78 and 45 rpm versions. By this time, Columiba had started its ZSP series for items that the company mastered and pressed; both sides of 6953 carry ZSP numbers in place of CCO numbers. Epic E3K 48912 was a collection of 3 CDs released in 1993 and titled The OKeh Rhythm & Blues Story 1949-1957. Columbia/ Legacy CK-64988 is a CD titled Juke Joint Jump: A Boogie Woogie Celebration; it was released in October 1996. Our basic information about these tracks draws from Leadbitter, Fancourt, and Pelletier, Blues Records 1943-1970 L-Z, Vol. 2, 1994 edition. Leadbitter et al. miss the vocal group (apparently 4 singers) on "Voodoo Blues" (they do get cited for "Probably," where the original label mmerely refers to them as "Chorus").

According to Chris Trent, "Mambo in Trumpet" and "Probably" are "definitely Sun Ra arrangements." "Mambo in Trumpet" uses the heavy Latin rhythm that Sunny was fond of in the late 1950s. "Probably" has a post-Ellingtonian sax ensemble with a heavy bottom; since Riley Hampton, who would became a major recording session arranger after he left Saunders, co-composed the number, we suspect that Ra retouched what Hampton had written. Trent says that "Voodoo Blues" is a musical "Rosetta stone" that combines R&B with Ra's "heavy rhythm exotica." There are particularly noticeable Ra touches in the instrumental interlude for piano and percussion and the tenor sax solo with baritone obbligato. "Honky Tonk Train Blues" is a feature for Earl Washington's piano; the horns are restricted to an accompaniment role, full of train-whistle emulations. The handling of the saxes is characteristically deft, however, and the train whistling makes a good excuse for some dissonant writing. Indeed, Hampton, Washington, and Easton shift from a clarinet trio, through two clarinets and a tenor sax [a violation of orthodox jazz arranging rules], to their usual instruments.

Leadbitter et al. mistakenly list "Rumble Mambo" as another title from this session(!). John McCarthy points out that it was actually a track by Link Wray and his Wraymen that was used as the B side for the 1963 and 1967 issues of an alternate take of "Hambone" (on OKeh 7166 and 7282, both 45-rpm singles). See Jeff Hall's Link Wray discography at http://pages.prodigy.com/cyclops/linkwray.html).

Sun15. Jo Jo Adams

Universal Recording, Chicago, September 1953

P 53117	It's Been So Long	unissued
P 53118	Corrine	rejected
E-53119	Call My Baby (Adams)	Parrot 788, Relic 7016 [CD], Classics 5083 [CD]
E-53120	Rebecca (Adams) [Listen to Rebecca]	Parrot 788, Relic 7016 [CD], Classics 5083 [CD]

In all previous discographies the personnel of Parrot 788, a single released in November 1953, was given as unknown.

It is obvious to the ear that this is a Red Saunders ensemble, and that Red is on drums. Sonny Cohn is the lead trumpeter. There is no alto saxophone. Leon Washington solos on both sides, a little more grittily than usual. The feature for guitar in "Call My Baby" is the work of player with a heavy attack, like Charlie Christian or T-Bone Walker; the guitarist accompanies four to the bar throughout both tracks in a Freddie Green style. The same guitarist appears to have been on Adams' 1947 session with Tom Archia for Aristocrat. Whoever it is, it isn't Ike Perkins.

The pieces may both be midtempo blues in the same key, but the band is clearly reading from charts. The arrangements definitely are by Sun Ra; especially on "Call My Baby," they keep threatening to turn into early Arkestra numbers, then veer temporarily back to the usual formulae. The arrangements are not just remarkable in their own right; they show Sun Ra's "far out" style emerging from its chrysalis. Thanks to the late Otto Flückiger for careful listening to these sides.

Parrot did not credit a composer on either released side; however, Relic gives Jo Jo Adams as the composer.

By interpolation in the Parrot matrix series (see our Parrot Discography), a date in September 1953 is indicated. The E- prefix indicates that this record was originally slated for release on a subsidiary called Eagle, which Al Benson ended up deciding not to open. In the list of Parrot/Blue Lake tapes that were leased to Chess in 1958 or 1959, four Jo Jo Adams tracks were included in tape box 2027 along with six tracks by the Crume Brothers, a gospel group. The Chess tape list is our source for the titles of the two unreleased sides. "Corrine," which according to Donn Fileti was rejected, was an attempted remake of a number from Jo Jo's first session for Melody Lane/Hy-Tone.

Relic 7016, Cool Playing Blues: Chicago Style, is a CD of Blues material recorded for Parrot Records. The other featured artists are "Little Papa Joe" [Jody Williams], L.C. McKinley, Curtis Jones, St. Louis Jimmy (see the 1956 entry below) and J.T. "Nature Boy" Brown.

Sun16. Joe Williams

Joe Williams Sings Everyday

Universal Recording, Chicago, September 28, 1953

53126?	It's Raining Again (Ra)		Regent 6002, Savoy MG 12216, Savoy SJL 1140, Denon/Savoy SV-0199 [CD]
53127?	Always on the Blue Side (Ra)		Regent 6002, Savoy MG 12216, Savoy SJL 1140, Denon/Savoy SV-0199 [CD]

Sun16a. Joe Williams

Joe Williams Sings Everyday

Universal Recording, Chicago, September 28 or December 31, 1953

	Detour Ahead (J. Frigo-Carter-Ellis)	Regent 6002, Savoy MG 12216, Savoy SJL 1140, Denon/Savoy SV-0199 [CD]
	Blow Mr. Low (Saunders-D. Williams)	Regent 6002, Savoy 116, Savoy MG 12216, Savoy SJL 1140, Denon/Savoy SV-0199 [CD]
BL-54104	Tired of Moving (Williams)	Blue Lake 102, Regent 6002, Savoy 116, Savoy MG 12216, Savoy SJL 1140, Denon/Savoy SV-0199 [CD], Empire Musicwerks CD N-1
BL-54103	In the Evening (L. Carr)	Blue Lake 102, Regent 6002, Savoy MG 12216, Savoy SJL 1140, Denon/Savoy SV-0199 [CD], Empire Musicwerks CD N-1

Blue Lake 102 was a 78 (probably also 45) rpm single released in January 1954 (which is when Parrot opened its Blue Lake subsidiary). "In the Evening" is credited to Joe Turner on the original label. "Tired of Moving" (called "Time for Moving" on some reissues) and "Blow Mr. Low" also appeared on Savoy 116, a 45 rpm single released later in the 1950s. We have grouped together the two items known to have been recorded on September 28, but have otherwise followed the order of the tracks on the Regent and Savoy LPs, as we do not know the original matrix numbers or even the precise recording date for four of the six tracks.

Parrot / Blue Lake was sold in March 1956 and became inactive in the fall of that year. While some of the remnants were licensed to Chess later, and others ended up in the hands of Relic Records, the Joe Williams masters were immediately sold to Regent/Savoy (which also bought a Coleman Hawkins session from the defunct label). All 6 tracks from this session were released in 1956 on the LP Regent 6002; they later appeared on LP as Savoy MG 12216 as Joe Williams Sings Everyday and were reissued (in 1984) on Savoy SJL 1140 under the title Everyday I Have the Blues. The Savoy album was reissued in its entirety on CD as Denon/Savoy SV-0199; issued in 1993, this reverted to the title Sings Everyday. All of these releases contained four other tracks recorded by Williams with a King Kolax unit (see the King Kolax Discography for these). In addition, the two sides that appeared on Joe Williams' Blue Lake single reappeared (in excellent sound) on Empire Musicwerks CD-N1, a collection of Parrot/Blue Lake jazz sides titled Jukebox Jazz! From the Southside of Chicago and released in December 2002.

The personnel are as listed in various sources, including Leslie Gourse's book, Every Day: The Story of Joe Williams (Quartet Books, 1985); Leadbitter et al. agree. Gourse says Williams gave 1950 as the date, but this is flatly unreliable (Blue Lake/Parrot did not exist in 1950!). And judging from Red's other recordings, there's no way he would have been performing so "modern" an arrangement as "It's Raining Again" in 1950. Walt Champion was also known as Walter Cole; he became Red's regular bassist later in the 1950s.

Leadbitter et al., reading more into the matrix numbers on the Blue Lake labels than is appropriate, give December 31, 1953 as the date, but the band on these vocal sides is smaller and includes a guitarist. In earlier versions of this discography, we gave early 1954 as the date. However, Bob Porter in his liner notes to SJL 1140 says that "It's Raining Again" and "Always on the Blue Side" were done on September 28, 1953 and the other four sides were cut "during that period." (The September 28 date is from the outside of a tape box, as was the custom at Parrot/Blue Lake.) A magazine article promoting the label appeared in December 1953 (now reproduced on our Parrot page); Joe Williams was one of the artists mentioned, so obviously some recording had already been done by then. Nothing would have prevented the sides from all being done at one session, but the only vacant Parrot matrix numbers around September 28, 1953 are 53125 and53126, while a block of 6 matrix numbers (53179 through 53184) opens up around the December 31 session. As many as four of the items we have listed here could actually be from the later session.

These were Joe Williams' last recordings in Chicago; he left town to join Count Basie around Christmas 1954.

Sun Ra discographer Julian Vein believes that all but "Blow Mr. Low" and "In the Evening" were arranged by Sun Ra; he published his opinion as early as 1967. Ra's involvement with "It's Raining Again" and "Always on the Blue Side" is particularly obvious; in fact, the lack of listed composer credits for these items is most intriguing. Sunny was not copyrighting any of his pieces during this period--and "Raining" and "Blue Side" sound like Ra compositions! "Tired of Moving" is a straightahead blues that Sunny is less likely to have composed; the original Blue Lake label attributes it to Joe Williams. Given Sunny's involvement with Saunders when the original "Blow Mr. Low-Blow" was cut in 1950, he probably at least retouched this piece and "In the Evening."

Sun17. Red Saunders and his Orchestra

Universal Recording, Chicago, December 31, 1953

BL-54101	Summertime (Gershwin)	Blue Lake 101, Chess CHV 415, Bellaphon [G] BJS4032, Empire Musicwerks CD-N1
BL-54102	Riverboat (Clark Terry) [Listen to Riverboat]	Blue Lake 101, Chess CHV 415, Bellaphon [G] BJS4032, Empire Musicwerks CD-N1
53181?	Lawdy, Lucy [ens shouts]	Chess CHV 413, Bellaphon [G] BJS4031

Blue Lake 101 was a 78 and 45 rpm single released in January 1954. "Lawdy Miss Lucy" and perhaps another unknown title were intended for release on Blue Lake (they were assigned matrix numbers 53181 and 53182, according to Leadbitter, Fancourt, and Pelletier; LFP mistake these numbers from the main Parrot matrix series, which started at U53100 and skipped from a U53 prefix to a U55, for numbers in the Blue Lake series, which started at BL-54101).

Parrot / Blue Lake went belly-up in 1956; Chess leased a big batch of masters from the company's last owner, John "Lawyer" Burton, in 1958 or 1959. Chess LP CHV 415 (released 1972) was titled Southside Jazz and CHV 413 (also released 1972), a compilation including Leo Parker, Sahib Shihab, and Red Saunders, was titled The Late Great King of the Baritone Sax. (The band shouts "Lawdy Miss Lucy" but the LP gives the title as "Lawdy, Lucy." The track was included because of Mac Easton's prominent baritone sax solo, in a style influenced by Leo Parker.) The Bellaphon issues (which are mentioned in Tom Lord's Jazz Discography) were German reissues of Chess material; dates and album titles unknown.

The date and personnel are from Joe Segal's liner notes to the Chess LP, CHV 415. The lineup fits the instrumentation that can be heard on the tracks, and was probably provided by Red Saunders himself. Leadbitter et al. supply incomplete instrumentation and no personnel, give two unknown titles for December 31, 1953, and refer to "Riverboat" and "Summertime" as 1954 recordings.

Sun Ra is not mentioned as the arranger in those notes, but Julian Vein has concluded that these were his arrangements. The arrangements are much more aggressively "modern" than anything the Saunders band committed to record earlier (except the interlude in "Voodoo Blues," and the two Jo Jo Adams sides done for Parrot in September). They appear to be Sunny's work from start to finish. According to Segal, the trombone soloist on "Summertime" is Marty Martinez, whereas Booby Floyd can be heard on "Riverboat."

The Clark Terry composition first appeared on record as "River Boat" on Flame 1003. Issued on a subsidiary of Franklin Kort's Swing Time label, the 78-rpm single came out in March 1952, according to a mention in the "R. & B. Beat" column in Billboard. There it was performed, in a very different arrangement, by a group led by guitarist Ike Perkins. Clark Terry was featured on trumpet, and Lonnie Simmons, whose composition "Organism" was used for the B side, played organ. Either Simmons or Perkins could have brought "Riverboat" to Saunders' attention.

Opportunities to get arrangements recorded unfortunately diminished during the following two years. Red Saunders recorded for Parrot/Blue Lake with Ann Carter (c. March 1954) and Walter Spriggs (c. October 1954), but there are no clear indications of Sunny's involvement with either session. Record companies were losing interest in the Saunders aggregation, and Sunny's last opportunity to arrange for Saunders would come in February 1955, behind singer Billy Brooks. However, he was doing occasional arrangements for King Kolax, who was leading a successful quintet during the period, and we believe that some of these made into record.

Sun18. King Kolax and his Quintette

Universal Recording, Chicago, December 22, 1954

54-222	What Have You Done to Me [GJ voc]	RST 1580 [CD], P-Vine Special [J] PCD 5271/4
54-223	Right Now [GJ, ens voc]	Top Rank RLP 111, Charly CRB 1043, RST 1580 [CD]
54-224	Push Out [KK voc]	unissued
55-225	Vivian (Kolax) -1	Vee-Jay 136
55-226	Goodnite Blues (Kolax) [KK voc]	Vee-Jay 136, Top Rank RLP 110, Charly CRB 1043

Session details from Lord's Jazz Discography. Lord has only 54-223 (misnumbered 54-233), 55-225, 55-226. The other items were filled in from Leadbitter and Slaven's Blues Records 1943 to 1970 A-K(1987). Leadbitter and Slaven have "Good Night Blues" for 54-225, and they give 54- as the prefix throughout (whereas Kurt Mohr gave 55- as the prefix for the last two items).

Vee-Jay 136 was a single released around June of 1955. Top Rank RLP110 was a French LP titled Jazzville Chicago Volume 1. RLP111 was titled Jazzville Chicago Volume 2. Both were compiled by Kurt Mohr and issued in 1962. Top Rank was a label belonging to the Rank Organisation in Britain; at the time Rank had a licensing agreement with Vee-Jay.

The second and fourth tracks were also issued on Charly LP CRB 1043, Rootin' and Tootin', a collection of Chicago R&B from small labels that was issued in 1985. The Charly LP notes incorrectly put "Right Now" on the next recording session. RST 1580 is an Austrian CD titled Grant "Mr. Blues" Jones: In the Dark (1949-1958). P-Vine Special PCD 5271/4 is a Japanese 4-CD box from 2000 titled Vee-Jay, The Chicago Black Music.The liner notes state that Jones is not the vocalist on "Goodnite Blues," even though other sources credit him with the vocals. King Kolax was a good enough singer that some have confused him with a professional blues shouter like Grant Jones...

Ken Ellzey suggests possible Sun Ra arrangements on both of King Kolax's sessions for Vee-Jay. Ra spoke of working with Kolax in interviews but revealed no details. Harold Ousley was indeed a member of an early Sun Ra band (in 1952). There is no need for Sun Ra arrangements (or anybody's arrangements) on generic jump band-style R&B like "Right Now," "What Have You Done to Me?," or "Goodnite Blues." However, "Vivian" (presumably named after Vivian Carter of Vee-Jay) is a mysterioso Latin number with percussion breaks built right into the theme. Off the beaten path for King Kolax, but straightforward for Sun Ra at this time. Harold Ousley did not want to rule out "Vivian" as a Sun Ra arrangement either: "Kolax wrote a lot himself, but he also used a lot of other people's stuff."

Sun19. Sun Ra

The Singles

Saturn 9/1954 is a 45 rpm single released in 1983. According to Michael Anderson, who was Ra's archivist in 1983, both sides of this single originated on a demo disk. The track was reissued in September 1996 on Evidence 22164, a 2-CD set titled The Singles. John Gilmore said that one of Sunny's vocal groups auditioned for a record label run by a woman (this would be Vivian Carter of Vee-Jay), but her verdict was that they sounded “too good” (a euphemism for “too White”). John told this story about the Cosmic Rays, but we know now that he often conflated them with the Nu Sounds, whose vocal style is more likely to have elicited such a reaction.

According to Alton Abraham, the Nu Sounds, led by Roland Williams, were one of the vocal groups being coached by Sun Ra. Location from Abraham and Robert Pruter; Club Evergreen was on North Clybourn Street. (On other occasions, Abraham attributed this side to a later vocal group, the Cosmic Rays; the source of the confusion is that Sunny had the Nu Sounds and the Rays record the same tunes, then picked the version he liked better to release. This policy applied not only to Ra's vocal compositions but also to some of the standards that he arranged for vocal groups.)

On October 5, 1954, a composer named Robert Douglas Mayo copyrighted “Dreams Come True.” Although Sun Ra's name is nowhere on the piece, the original sheet music is in his handwriting! Sunny would record the song with Clyde Williams and members of the Arkestra on two occasions in the fall of 1956. Shortly after this, the long hiatus ended for good, and Sun Ra began to copyright his tunes again. Research by James Wolf shows that Le Sonyr Ra (no apostrophe in the Library of Congress files) copyrighted “Bop Is a Spaceship Lullaby” on November 18, 1954, and “Chicago USA” on December 23, 1954. Both had lyrics as well as music by Ra and were obviously intended for vocal groups. These were followed on February 9, 1955 by “Baby Please Be Mine” (under the name Sun Ra).

Although John Gilmore and others recalled recordings of some of these songs, all were thought to be lost until rehearsal tapes were recovered in 2000. In fact, “Chicago USA” was written for the Nu Sounds, and rehearsal recordings of it and “Bop Is a Spaceship Lullaby” have been found. "Black Sky and Blue Moon" has turned up as well. No such luck, though, with “Baby Please Be Mine.”.

A couple of instrumental performances have also survived from this period. They had to wait for release till 1973.

Sun20. Sun Ra

Deep Purple

According to Julian Vein, these two tracks were sold to Black Lion/Freedom in 1971, along with recordings from 1962 and 1963 that later became side B of the Saturn LP The Invisible Shield but were not issued at the time. Saturn 485 (released in 1973) was an LP titled Deep Purple (on some copies, Dreams Come True). Although it had standard printed white labels with a Chicago address for the company, no covers were printed for it; the LP was issued with various generic covers, often hand decorated by members of later Arkestras. All of Side A of this LP was reissued on Evidence 22014, Sound Sun Pleasure!!, a CD from 1992. “Can This Be Love?” was reissued again in 2000 on 1201 Music 9019, a CD titled Standards.

Sun21. The Nu Sounds

Spaceship Lullaby

A rehearsal tape, from 1954 or 1955, was released on a 2003 CD, Spaceship Lullaby, Atavistic UMS/ALP243. The version of “Foggy Day” on this tape is not the same one that was released in 1983 on a Saturn single.

Sun22. Sun Ra

Spaceship Lullaby

“Holiday for Strings” and “Honeysuckle Rose” were on a rehearsal tape that Ra brought to WKCR-FM; they were broadcast during the 1987 Sun Ra Festival. In the second edition of this discography, Sun Ra's instrument was incorrectly identified as an electric piano and Robert Barry's presence on drums was noted. These and other selections from the tape were released for the first time on CD in 2003, Atavistic UMS/ALP243, Spaceship Lullaby, where the sound, though clearly emanating from an old home tape machine, is much improved over what could be heard on the broadcast.

Sun23. The Lintels

Spaceship Lullaby

This rehearsal tape, from 1954 or 1955, was released on a 2003 CD, Spaceship Lullaby, Atavistic UMS/ALP243. The Lintels were a doowop group; this was their first rehearsal with Sun Ra. It is not known whether they continued to work with him, but no releases on Saturn ensued. The tune identified here as “Baby Please Be Mine” is not Sun Ra's composition.

1955 also saw Sunny's last recorded efforts as an arranger for the Red Saunders band. Although many of Red's regulars would remain in the band until the Club DeLisa closed in February 1958, and some stayed with him beyond that, R&B was trending toward rock and roll and record companies were beginning to see Saunders' band as dated.

Sun24. Billy Brooks | Red Saunder's Band [sic]^ / Billy Brooks | Red Saunders Orch.

Chicago, February 18, 1955

ACA3109	Mambo Is Everywhere (L. L. Lawrence)^ -1	Duke 142
ACA3110	Song of the Dreamer (Eddie "Tex" Curtis)^	Duke 142
ACA3111	Donna (L. Cox-E. Curtis)	Duke 145
ACA3112	I Want Your Love Tonight (Eddie "Tex" Curtis)^ -1 [Listen to I Want Your Love Tonight]	Duke 149
HHA 21201	This Is My Prayer (Don D. Robey [sic])^ -2	Duke 149

Here we have three singles (Duke 142, 145, and 149) not listed in Lord, Bruyninckx, or Leadbitter! They are listed in Jepsen's discography; however, Jepsen mentions only Brooks and Saunders in his personnel. Duke 142, and one side from 145 and 149, appear to have come from a 4-tune session with the Red Saunders band. (The flip side of 145 is from a different session with a different band; the flip of 149 includes the Saunders band and may be from the session of February 18, 1955.)

Dan Kochakian owns a copy of Duke 142, a 78 and 45-rpm single that was released in June 1955 (date provided by Bill Daniels' dating guide). The label states Houston, Texas, but that's where the Duke/Peacock home office was. The ACA prefix indicated that the sides were mastered at ACA Studios on Fannin Street in downtown Houston. Swiss jazz researcher Kurt Mohr said that Don Robey of Duke Records often supervised sessions in Chicago. Press clippings collected by Robert Pruter show that Billy Brooks was performing at the Club DeLisa in March and April 1954 (duly advertised in the Defender on March 13 and 20 and April 3). On July 10, Brooks was working Club Evergreen with a band led by Red Holloway. Galen Gart and Roy C. Ames, in Duke/Peacock Records: An Illustrated History with Discography (Milford, NH: Big Nickel Publications, p. 78) state that Don Robey flew to Chicago in February 1955 to record Brooks. However, the incomplete chronological list of Brooks sessions (which leaves out his first one for Duke/Peacock in 1953) identifies only the session of November 1, 1955 as done in Chicago. Clearly, however, the session of February 18, 1955 is the one they were referring to on page 78.

To nail the date down further, we know (from Gart and Ames, p. 222) that "Mambo Is Everywhere" and "Song of the Dreamer" were mastered for 45 and 78rpm on March 4, 1955, and remastered on April 11, 1955. "Donna" and "I Want Your Love Tonight" were mastered on August 3, 1955.

"Mambo Is Everywhere" has Latin rhythms of the sort favored by Sun Ra. "Song of the Dreamer" is a sentimental Country & Western tune of a sort that Ra is not known to have arranged (and while there is a potentially interesting alternation between a clarinet/bass clarinet trio and the standard sax section, the transition is rather gauchely handled). Gart and Ames (p. 78) state that the record was "only a moderate hit," but that the tune was covered by Johnnie Ray on Columbia and Eddie Fisher on RCA Victor, indicating commercial potential.

A second Billy Brooks single, on Duke 145 (78 rpm), is now in the collection of Armin Büttner. It was probably released in August or September 1955. Side A, "Donna," is credited to Billy Brooks / Red Saunders Orch. "Donna" does not use the clarinets, but it is a sentimental tune related to "Song of the Dreamer" and Sunny's involvement seems unlikely. (The title, according to Gart and Ames, was originally "I Want to Be with Donna.")

Side B of Duke 145, "I'm Gone," is a fast boogie credited to Billy Brooks and his Orchestra. (The composition is credited to Don Robey, the owner of Duke/ Peacock, an attribution that should be taken with a grain of salt.) All indications are that this is a different band, with a solo by a tenor player who is much grittier than Leon Washington. The guitarist could be Ike Perkins, however. The matrix number is ACA3028, which indicates an earlier session. In fact, Gart and Ames (p. 221) show that "I'm Gone" (which was not mastered till August 17, 1955) did come from an earlier session, presumably on November 23, 1954. The other three titles from this session (ACA3029, "Be My Baby"; ACA3030, "Then I Can Live"; ACA 3031, "From Midnight till Morning") were never released. Alvin Fielder says that he was drumming on many of Duke's studio sessions in Houston at the time; he may well be on these sides.

A copy of Duke 149 is now in the collection of Armin Büttner. On the evidence of the matrix numbers, ACA3112 ("I Want Your Love Tonight") is from the same session with Red Saunders. The flip side, HHA 21201 ("This Is My Prayer"), would seem from the matrix to be from a different session (not clear which one, but Brooks recorded for Duke on October 28 and November 1, 1955, and did his final session for the label on February 26, 1957). However, both sides of Duke 149 credit the accompaniment to Red Saunder's Band [sic], and the band sounds the same on both sides. (However, there is no guitar on "This Is My Prayer," and the pianist doubles on celeste.) Leon Washington solos on "I Want Your Love," and there are 8 bars for Riley Hampton on "Prayer," while Mac Easton is prominent in the backing on both. "I Want" is a mambo that could have been arranged by Sun Ra. For now, "This Is My Prayer" is included with the February 18, 1955 session; if it came from a later session, other material including the Red Saunders band ought to materialize.

The personnel were identified by ear, assuming non-catastrophic turnover since the last Joe Williams session. Fip Ricard left the band on November 10, 1954, according to Otto Flückiger's notes, so trumpet #2 must be someone else. Mac Easton recorded with Gene Ammons for Prestige in Hackensack, New Jersey, on November 26, 1954 and February 8, 1955, but is not known to have made any other excursions out of town. (Armin Büttner believes that Mac is present on "Donna," and he would have had time to return to Chicago for this session.)

Sunny also continued his relationship with the King Kolax band, which made a second session for Vee-Jay.

Sun25. King Kolax and his Quintette

Universal Recording, Chicago, September 16, 1955

55-326	Those Crazy Rhythm 'n' Blues [CC voc] -1, 2	Top Rank RLP 110, Charly CRB 1043
55-327	H2O -1	Top Rank RLP 110
55-328	Traveling	unissued
55-329	Time [KK voc]	Top Rank RLP 110
55-330	Enchanted Moods	unissued
55-331	Four Dimensions	unissued

Session details from Lord's Jazz Discography, except that Lord omits 55-328, 330, and 331, which were filled in from Leadbitter and Slaven, Blues Records 1943 to 1970 A-K (1987). Lord (and the Charly compilers) credit Grant Jones with thelead vocal on "Those Crazy Rhythm 'n Blues" but the piece is not included in Grant "Mr. Blues" Jones: In the Dark (1949-1958) on the Austrian CD RST 1580 (1994). The Mohr-Flückiger-Demeusy files reveal that the mystery vocalist was Calvin Carter, brother of Vivian Carter! It is not clear who is responsible for impersonating a female fan who wants to hear "those crazy rhythm 'n' blues."

These tracks were intended for release on Vee-Jay but none were ever issued by that label. (Apparently the company had lost interest even in blues vocals from this source.) Top Rank RLP110 was a French LP titled Jazzville Chicago Volume 1. It was compiled by Kurt Mohr and issued in 1961. One track was also issued on Charly CRB 1043, Rootin' and Tootin', an LP collection of Chicago R&B derived from the Vee Jay label. The Charly LP incorrectly gives "Cowboy" Martin and not Malachi Favors as the bassist.

"Those Crazy Rhythm 'n' Blues" is standard jump-band R&B, and "Time" is an ordinary slow blues. No need for a written arrangement from Sun Ra... "H2O" is a straight bebop number. The other tracks have not been checked, but obviously "Enchanted Moods," and "Four Dimensions" do sound promising as far as Ra arrangements go.

Although Sunny continued to arrange for other leaders, we don't know of any specific items being recorded after the King Kolax session of September 1955. It didn't matter now, because Sunny was finally getting ready to record his own band.

We will refer to the small to medium-sized band that Sun Ra led as the Arkestra, although recent scholarship reveals that it wasn't called the "Arkistra" till late 1956, and didn't acquire its present-day spelling till February 1957. Once Sunny finally adopted it, the bllling was used on recordings well before it showed up in nightclub ads or other publicity for live performances.

Sunny didn't always work with trios; he had indulged in several short-lived experiments with larger ensembles. Meanwhile, only Robert Barry stayed with him throughout the pre-Arkestral period. Tommy Hunter had to flee to New York for a while in 1950; in 1953 he went back there and stayed. Pat Patrick was unavailable during most of 1952 and 1953 because he was attending college at Florida A&M. A key addition was tenor saxophonist John Gilmore. Born on September 28, 1931 in Summit, Mississippi, but raised in Chicago, Gilmore attended DuSable High School with its fabled band program. After getting out of the Air Force in 1953, he worked with Earl Hines and quickly became regarded as one of the up and coming young musicians in Chicago. An article in the Roosevelt Torch by Joe Segal (December 11, 1953), describes the university's Jazz Club concert of December 8, in which guest artist Charlie Parker alternated sets with “some of the top local artists,” including John Jenkins on alto sax, Harold Ousley and “Johnny” Gilmore on tenor sax, Andrew Hill, piano, and Hal Russell, drums. (Our thanks to Chris DeVito for bringing this article to our attention.) Not long after this event, Gilmore began rehearsing with The Ra. In the first half of 1954, Sun Ra had just John Gilmore and Robert Barry, augmented by Pat Patrick when he returned from college at Florida A&M.

After two weeks on the job, Sun Ra gets mentioned in an ad. From the Chicago Defender, December 25, 1954.

The first engagement that Ra took as a leader in Chicago with members of his experimental ensembles took place in 1954. Before John Gilmore became a regular, Ra had rehearsed with tenor saxophonists John Tinsey and Swing Lee O'Neil. Bassist Earl Demus was also a participant. A Chicago Defender ad from December 25, 1954--the first mention of his name in that newapaper since he'd moved to Chicago--announced a gig by Le Sony'r Ra, accompanied by O'Neil, Demus and Robert Barry (drums). The venue was Duke Slater's Vincennes Lounge.

Swing Lee O'Neil (with tenor sax) poses with club owner Duke Slater (second from left), and patrons Shirley Jacobs (far left), Ivory Solomon (between Slater and O'Neil), and Rose Early (right). The man at back center is unidentifed. From the Chicago Defender, December 25, 1954, p. 16.

The band had already been at the Lounge for two weeks. Slater had just opened for business, probably during the first week of December 1954. The band was duly advertised on December 11 and 18, but on both occasions O'Neil was identified as the leader and the other participants were not named. It wasn't until the club's third ad, on December 25, that the personnel was listed and Ra got top billing. But in the same issue, it was O'Neil who appeared in the genre photo of featured musician hamming it up with club owner and female patrons. By the end of 1955, Sunny no longer had trouble being identified as the leader of his own ensembles, but throughout his stay in Chicago, he was rarely the focus of publicity in the Defender.

Sun Ra's quartet finishes at the Vincennes Lounge. Chicago Defender, January 15, 1955, p. 13.

Ra's quartet was at the Vincennes Lounge for 6 weeks. On January 22, 1955, a quartet led by Red Simms took over; Simms kept Demus on as bassist. For the rest of the year, Simms' quartet and a quartet led by Lefty Bates alternated at the Lounge. Sunny is unlikely to have viewed this as a setback; Slater's establishment was not suited to the larger ensembles that he had in mind. But he had to go back to putting in long hours in the strip joints of Calumet City; judging from Robert Barry's reminiscences, he still needed the income well into 1955. Meanwhile, after Pat Patrick's return, the Arkestra picked up Dave Young on trumpet, then Julian Priester on trombone, then Richard Evans on bass, then Jim Herndon joined on tympani and timbales. Not all of the additions were permanent: for a little while Sunny was rehearsing an octet with an alto saxophonist named Sonny Rollins.

A side note on Sonny Rollins' two sojourns in Chicago seems apropos here. Little is known about either of them, because Rollins wasn't playing in public. His first stay, from somewhere in the fall of 1949 to January 1950, involved rehearsing with drummer Ike Day. The second stay began in May 1955, when Rollins got out of the Federal drug treatment facility in Lexington, Kentucky, and ended in November, when he was asked to replace Harold Land in the Clifford Brown-Max Roach quintet. Rollins took menial jobs, such as janitorial work, to support himself. He rehearsed with other musicians--for instance, he and Booker Little worked on "There's No Business like Show Business"--and attended some performances at clubs, but took no gigs. (Eric Nisenson's biography Open Sky provides the chronology, plus Rollins quotes about day jobs and rehearsing with Booker Little. It doesn't mention the rehearsals with Sunny, which probably didn't go on for long.)

The Grand Terrace in the late 1950s. From the Charles Walton collection, Chicago Public Library.

1955 also saw Sunny's return to the Local 208 contract list, for the first time in nearly 9 years. On July 7, he filed a 5 week contract with a club called Shep's Playhouse, replacing Eldee Young's group. According to John Szwed's biography, Alton Abraham helped him obtain the gig. Paying no mind to legalities,the Union local identified him as Herman Blount--probably the name that was on the contract. We don't know how large a group the engagement called for. Located at 4233 Lake Park Avenue, Shep's Playhouse was in operation for about a year, from May 1955 to somewhere in the middle of 1956. Shortly after it opened, the club hosted a Wednesday night talent show operated by DJ McKie Fitzhugh, but he soon moved on to other venues. One of the leaders to post a contract with the establishment later on was Sunny's former bassist Earl Demus, after the Red Simms combo broke up. More we cannot say, because the Playhouse bought no ads in the Defender.

From the Chicago Defender, October 1, 1955, p. 28. The Grand Terrace management seems to have been unaware that Sun Ra and Sonne Blount were the same performer. And who encouraged Rudy Crier to respell his name?

At the beginning of October, again with Abraham's help, Sunny was booked at the Grand Terrace, a venerable ballroom whose management was going through a spell of trying to revive it as a musical venue. The ballroom had reopened to much fanfare in May 1955; a show featuring King Kolax's band had run out of steam in July; a second revue featuring Memphis Slim's combo had a shorter run in August. Sunny appeared as part of an elaborate show called "Autumn Follies" organized by Rudy Crier; top billing went to blues and soul singer Harold Burrage. The Defender ads made special mention of his Wurlitzer "electronic" piano. This would have been a significant novelty for clubgoers in those days; Sunny had spotted one in a music store not long after it first became commercially available.

From the Chicago Defender, October 22, 1955, p. 28, before shrinkage set in.

The show apparently started off with some promise commercially, but by the end of October, the ads in the Defender were rapidly shrinking--in proportion, we suspect, to the ballroom's revenues. The last advertisement ran on November 5. The Defender's entertainment roundup mentioned the show one more time, on December 3, by which time the Terrace was ready to enter another period of inactivity. (It would attempt new shows on three different occasions during 1956. The ballroom's last gasp would be a run from August through October 1957.)

The Grand Terrace job probably didn't call for the entire ensemble, but by the time it started, Sunny had assembled a stable octet of Dave Young (tp); Julian Priester (tb); John Gilmore (ts); Pat Patrick (as, bars); Richard Evans (b); Robert Barry (d); and Jim Herndon (tymp, timb). The best-known photo of the early Arkestra shows this octet lineup doing a one-nighter at the Parkway Ballroom. Another photo from the same period (from the collection of Charles Walton) shows the same group playing the Parkway, with the addition of the Lester Young disciple Johnny Thompson (ts), who, it might be worth adding, had previously worked with such leaders as King Kolax. But Thompson, who appeared on a handful of recording sessions during his career, is not known to have recorded anything with Sun Ra, and John Gilmore did not recall him remaining in the band for long. Tenor battles would not become part of the Arkestra's presentation.

Ra was yet to copyright a single instrumental composition, but there was starting to be movement on the Arkestral front: Julian Priester copyrighted his pieces “Urnack,” “Soft Talk,” and “Ra's Star” on October 10, 1955; all three were part of the early Arkestra's repertoire, and two were among the first to be recorded. On the very same date, Richard Evans copyrighted “Lullaby of Forrealville,” a piece that would turn up on the July 1956 session for Transition.

The primary venue for the full Arkestra during this formative period was the Parkway Ba

	Dig This Boogie (Harris) [voc, p, d only]		Bullet 251, Krazy Kat KK783, Classics 1013 [CD]
	Lightnin' Struck the Poorhouse (Harris)		Bullet 251, Krazy Kat KK783, Classics 1013 [CD]
	My Baby's Barrelhouse (Harris)		Bullet 252, Route 66 KIX 20, Classics 1013 [CD]
	Drinking by Myself (Harris)		Bullet 252, Route 66 KIX 3, Route 66 RBD 3 [CD], Classics 1013 [CD]

CCO 5278	Last Night's Party^ [JW voc]	OKeh 6914
CCO 5279	Hey Bartender^ [JW voc] (R. Hall-Saunders)	OKeh 7061, Moonshine LP 114, Memories Record Prevue MEP-1003, Epic E3K 48912 [CD], Columbia CK40799 [CD]
CCO 5280	Boot 'em Up (Saunders-L. Washington)	OKeh 6862, Columbia [Can] C-1926
CCO 5281	Sugar Bounce (Toombs-Sweet) [JW, ens voc]	OKeh 6834, Moonshine LP 114
CCO 5282	Gentle Lover [JD voc]	OKeh 6856
CCO 5283	J.D. Blues [JD voc]	OKeh 6856

	Piano Interlude (Ra)		Saturn 485, Evidence 22014 [CD]
	Can This Be Love? (Smith-James) -1		Saturn 485, Evidence 22014 [CD], 1201 Music 9019 [CD]

	A Foggy Day (Gerswhin-Gershwin)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	A Perfume Counter		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Love Is...		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Wordless Piece		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	I Was Wrong		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Louise		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	St. Louis Blues (Handy)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	The Wooden Soldier and the China Doll		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]

	Spaceship Lullaby (Ra)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Stranger in Paradise (Borodin-Wright-Forrest)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Just One of ThoseThings (Porter)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Honky Tonk		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Haunted Heart		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Evelyn		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Honeysuckle Rose (Waller-Razaf)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Honey		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Black Sky & Blue Moon (Ra)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Ra coaching Roland Williams		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Holiday for Strings (Ra dynamics demo)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Holiday for Strings (Rose-Gallo)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	I Fall Asleep Counting My Blessings		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Nice Work If You Can Get It (Gershwin-Gershwin)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Somebody Loves Me (Gershwin-Gershwin)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Chicago USA (Ra)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Chicago USA (Ra) -1		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]

	C'est Si Bon		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Blue Moon (Rodgers-Hart)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Baby Please Be Mine		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	Blue Skies (Berlin)		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]
	My Only Love		Atavistic UMS/ALP243 [CD]

From Sonny Blount to Sun Ra: The Chicago Years

© Robert L. Campbell, Christopher Trent, and Robert Pruter

Revised January 9, 2008

Sun Ra at the piano, 1958. From the film The Cry of Jazz.

Sun1. Wynonie (Mr. Blues) Harris with the Jimmie Jackson Orchestra

Sun2. Sonny Blount with Coleman Hawkins and Stuff Smith

Accompaniment really by the Dozier Boys and Sonny Blount. From the collection of Tom Kelly.

Sun3. Andrew Tibbs and "The Dozier Boys" with Sax Mallard's Combo [sic] / Andy Tibbs and The Dozier Boys^

From the collection of Dr. Robert Stallworth.

A Cash Box advertisement for Aristocrat 1105, from the March 5, 1949 issue. Courtesy of Dan Kochakian.

From the collection of Armin Büttner

From the collection of Robert L. Campbell

Sun4. The Dozier Boys and Eugene Wright / Eugene Wright and the Dukes of Swing

From the collection of Robert L. Campbell

From the collection of Tom Kelly

This 1973 LP included the oldest surviving recording made on Sonny Blount's tape machine. From the collection of Chris Trent.

Sun5. Sonny Blount and Stuff Smith

Deep Purple

Sun6. "Red" Saunders and Orchestra

Sun7. Dorothy Donegan acc. by "Red" Saunders and his Orchestra

Sun8. Red Saunders and his Orchestra

Sun9. Miss Sharecropper

Sun9a. The Space Trio

From the collection of Armin Büttner

Sun10. Red Saunders & his Orchestra / Red Saunders & his Orch. ^

Sun11. Red Saunders and his Orchestra / Red Saunders & his Orch.^

From the collection of Billy Vera

From the collection of Robert L. Campbell

A Cash Box advertisement for "Hambone," from February 1952.

The original US release of "Hambone." From the collection of Robert L. Campbell

Red scores his only international release. From the collection of Robert L. Campbell

Sun12. Red Saunders & his Orch. with Dolores Hawkins & The Hambone Kids* / Red Saunders & his Orchestra

From the collection of Billy Vera

Sun13. Red Saunders & his Orchestra / Red Saunders & his Orch. ^

From the collection of Robert L. Campbell

Sun14. Red Saunders & his Orch.

From the collection of Robert L. Campbell

From the collection of Dr. Robert Stallworth

Sun15. Jo Jo Adams

From the collection of Dr. Robert Stallworth

From the collection of Tom Kelly

Sun16. Joe Williams

Joe Williams Sings Everyday

Sun16a. Joe Williams

Joe Williams Sings Everyday

From the collection of Tom Kelly

From the collection of Robert L. Campbell

Sun17. Red Saunders and his Orchestra

From the collection of Robert L. Campbell

From the collection of Tom Kelly

Sun18. King Kolax and his Quintette

From the collection of Tom Kelly

Sun19. Sun Ra

The Singles

Sun20. Sun Ra

Deep Purple

Sun21. The Nu Sounds

Spaceship Lullaby

Sun22. Sun Ra

Spaceship Lullaby

Sun23. The Lintels

Spaceship Lullaby

Sun24. Billy Brooks | Red Saunder's Band [sic]^ / Billy Brooks | Red Saunders Orch.

From the collection of Armin Büttner

From the collection of Armin Büttner

Sun25. King Kolax and his Quintette

After two weeks on the job, Sun Ra gets mentioned in an ad. From the Chicago Defender, December 25, 1954.

Swing Lee O'Neil (with tenor sax) poses with club owner Duke Slater (second from left), and patrons Shirley Jacobs (far left), Ivory Solomon (between Slater and O'Neil), and Rose Early (right). The man at back center is unidentifed. From the Chicago Defender, December 25, 1954, p. 16.

Sun Ra's quartet finishes at the Vincennes Lounge. Chicago Defender, January 15, 1955, p. 13.

The Grand Terrace in the late 1950s. From the Charles Walton collection, Chicago Public Library.

From the Chicago Defender, October 1, 1955, p. 28. The Grand Terrace management seems to have been unaware that Sun Ra and Sonne Blount were the same performer. And who encouraged Rudy Crier to respell his name?

From the Chicago Defender, October 22, 1955, p. 28, before shrinkage set in.

From the Chicago Defender, November 5, 1955, p. 29.

From Sonny Blount to Sun Ra:
The Chicago Years