The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
All About Jazz	^[1]
AllMusic	^[2]
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide	^[3]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	^[4]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings	^[5]

The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One is a 1965 album by the jazz musician Sun Ra. The back cover describes it as an "album of compositions and arrangements by Sun Ra played by Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra".

The album is an example of the radical break which Sun Ra's music of that time had made with "previous notions of melody or harmony".^[6] Although heavily percussive, the music also dispenses with a continuous beat; instead Ra's music is reconstructed around "interweaving compositional and improvisatory creative principles with programmatic affects".^[7]

The album was originally released as The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, with a B/W sleeve designed by Ra himself.^[8] This was replaced with a new orange and red sleeve by Howard Bernstein & Baby Jerry - showing Sun Ra with the third eye - and the appendage Vol. 1 added when The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume Two was released in 1966.

The album was re-released on CD by ZYX-Music (ESP 1014-2) in the 1990s.

Gene Tyranny describes the album in his review as

The astonishing sessions that went light years beyond "free jazz" improvisation to create a music of deeply felt explosive and gentle gesture made from sound itself without reference to previous notions of melody or harmony.^[9]

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Transcription

Recording the album

Marshall Allen described the recording of the album in John F Szwed's biography of Sun Ra, Space Is The Place;

"Sun Ra would go to the studio and he would play something, the bass would come in, and if he didn't like it he'd stop it; and he'd give the drummer a particular rhythm, tell the bass he wanted not a 'boom boom boom,' but something else, and then he'd begin to try out the horns, we're all standing there wondering what's next...

"I just picked up the piccolo and worked with what was going on, what mood they set, or what feeling they had. A lot of things we'd be rehearsing and we did the wrong things and Sun Ra stopped the arrangement and changed it. Or he would change the person who was playing the particular solo, so that changes the arrangement. So the one that was soloing would get another part given to him personally. 'Cos he knew people. He could understand what you could do better so he would fit that with what he would tell you." Marshall Allen ^[10]

Track listing

All compositions by Sun Ra

12" Vinyl

Side A:

"Heliocentric" – 4:00
"Outer Nothingness" – 7:40
"Other Worlds" – 4:18

Side B:

"The Cosmos" – 7:20
"Of Heavenly Things" – 5:40
"Nebulae" – 3:16
"Dancing in the Sun" – 1:50

Recorded at Studio RLA, New York, April 20, 1965. Engineered by Richard L Alderson.

Musicians

Sun Ra - Piano, Bass marimba, Electric Celeste, Timpani
Chris Capers - Trumpet
Teddy Nance - Trombone
Bernard Pettaway - Bass Trombone
Marshall Allen - Piccolo, Alto sax, Bells, Spiral Cymbal
Danny Davis - Flute, Alto Sax
Robert Cummings - Bass Clarinet, Woodblocks
John Gilmore - Tenor Sax, Timpani
Pat Patrick - Baritone Sax, Timpani
Ronnie Boykins - Bass
Jimhmi Johnson - Drums, Percussion, Timpani

Adapted from the ESP Sleeve notes.

References

^ Wuethrich, Matthew (13 January 2003). "Sun Ra: The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol. I". AllAboutJazz. Retrieved 26 November 2019.
^ Allmusic review
^ Swenson, J., ed. (1985). The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide. USA: Random House/Rolling Stone. pp. 186. ISBN 0-394-72643-X.
^ Larkin, Colin (2007). Encyclopedia of Popular Music (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195313734.
^ Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (9th ed.). Penguin. p. 1357. ISBN 978-0-141-03401-0.
^ Tyranny, Blue Gene. "The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol. 1". Allmusic. Retrieved 2008-11-09.
^ Jost, Ekkehard (1974). Studies in Jazz Research 4: Free Jazz. Universal Edition. p. 187.
^ Sun Ra Discography, R Campbell
^ All Music Guide
^ Quoted in Szwr, John Space Is The Place, Mojo, 2000, p216

v t e Sun Ra
Discography
Arkestra Members	John Gilmore Julian Priester Pat Patrick Charles Davis Victor Sproles Marshall Allen Ronnie Boykins James Spaulding Phil Cohran Clifford Jarvis Lex Humphries Michael Ray June Tyson Ahmed Abdullah Danny Ray Thompson
Chicago period studio albums	Jazz by Sun Ra Super-Sonic Jazz Sound of Joy Visits Planet Earth The Nubians of Plutonia Jazz in Silhouette Sound Sun Pleasure!! Interstellar Low Ways Fate in a Pleasant Mood Holiday for Soul Dance Angels and Demons at Play We Travel the Space Ways
New York period studio albums	The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra Bad and Beautiful Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow Secrets of the Sun When Sun Comes Out Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy When Angels Speak of Love Other Planes of There The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One The Magic City The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume Two Strange Strings Monorails and Satellites Atlantis
Philadelphia period studio albums	Space Is the Place (soundtrack) Space Is The Place Pathways to Unknown Worlds Cosmos Deep Purple Some Blues But Not the Kind That's Blue New Steps Other Voices, Other Blues Visions Lanquidity Sleeping Beauty Strange Celestial Road Reflections in Blue Hours After Blue Delight Somewhere Else Purple Night Mayan Temples
Live albums	Featuring Pharoah Sanders & Black Harold Nothing Is Nuits de la Fondation Maeght It's After the End of the World Black Myth/Out in Space Live in Egypt 1 Nidhamu Horizon Live In Montreux Unity Live from Soundscape I, Pharaoh Sunrise in Different Dimensions Cosmo Omnibus Imagiable Illusion Thunder of the Gods

This page was last edited on 30 May 2022, at 07:39