Sun Ra Arkestra

LP version. Super-Sonic Jazz was the debut album on Saturn, the label through which Sun Ra issued his own music, and the first full statement of the Arkestra's project. It came out in 1957, its cover announcing a "21st Century Limited Edition". This expanded double LP from Cosmic Myth Records is titled Supersonic Jazz. The original twelve tracks fill the first record, and fourteen alternate versions and studio takes fill the second.

The album was recorded at RCA Studios in Chicago around October 1956, with Will Connor as engineer and Alton Abraham credited as executive producer. Sun Ra wrote and arranged everything except Soft Talk, by trombonist Julian Priester, and plays piano and electric piano. Around him are John Gilmore on tenor saxophone, Pat Patrick on alto and baritone, Art Hoyle on trumpet, James Scales on alto and Charles Davis on baritone. Victor Sproles plays bass, Wilburn Green electric bass, and the drums are shared by Robert Barry and William Cochran. Jim Herndon adds timpani and timbales, a rare colour in a jazz band of the time.

Sides A and B follow the 1957 running order. India sets things in motion, and Sunology returns in a second part to close the first side. Advice to Medics is a short piece led by the electric piano. Kingdom of Not and Blues at Midnight push forward behind Gilmore's tenor. Sides C and D hold the unissued material. There are two instrumental takes of Somebody Else's Idea, which, as Musica Jazz points out, later became a vocal number for June Tyson. Alternate versions of State Street and Velvet sit beside pieces such as Saturn #2, Stratosphere and Space Aura.

According to the label, the album was not very well received when it first appeared. Impulse! reissued it in 1974 as Super-Sonic Sounds, and Evidence brought it back on CD under its original title in 1991. Reviewing this edition, Musica Jazz noted "a compositional voice marked by striking originality". It heard Space Aura as a piece that "seems to belong more to Saturn than to Earth".

This edition is a remastered mono double LP in a tip-on gatefold sleeve reproducing the black and yellow 21st Century Edition cover. A 12-inch insert reproduces the 1957 white and red cover. It is on Cosmic Myth Records, catalogue number CMR-009, 2025, produced for reissue by Irwin Chusid and Michael D. Anderson and mastered by Joe Lizzi, with notes by Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo and Rodger Coleman and photos of the Arkestra at the Parkway Ballroom in Chicago in 1955.