Sun Ra - Uncharted Passages - (Colored Vinyl, Yellow) - [Vinyl]

Sun Ra was a master of misdirection. Tape boxes wrongly labeled—whether by accident or design—are legendary among Ra archivists. One can speculate about the artist's intent or carelessness, but source misinformation abounds on Ra tape cases, album jackets, cassettes, ephemera—as well as in interviews. It's as if Ra, in furtherance of his own mythmaking, wanted to keep historians guessing. This project began as a misidentified tape discovered by Michael D. Anderson of the Sun Ra Music Archive. The 7-inch reel, which contained a live Ra solo piano performance of 11 works—some recognizable, others not—was of stellar quality, and was marked as a 1979 Carnegie Hall date. But the program on the tape did not align with known facts (e.g., titles played, concert duration) which were chronicled in a Newsday review of Ra's appearance at Carnegie in September of that year. With a prod from writer/historian Ted Gioia and further research by myself, the tape was eventually identified as a mostly unreleased July 1977 performance by Ra at a downtown NYC "jazz café" called The Axis-in-Soho. A1. Axis Rhapsody A2. St. Louis Blues B1. Blue Play B2. Axis Nexus B3. Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child C1. Axis Entempore C2. Honeysuckle Rose - Enlightment C3. Space Is The Place D1. Axis Impromptu D2. Everything I Have Is Yours D3. At Sundown D4. June Night D5. Rumination