Sun Ra

Featuring: Sun Ra Arkestra

CD version. Super-Sonic Jazz was the debut album on Saturn, the label through which Sun Ra released his own records. On it the Arkestra first set out its mission. It appeared in 1957, its cover declaring a "21st Century Limited Edition". This expanded double CD from Cosmic Myth Records is titled Supersonic Jazz. It adds fourteen alternate versions and studio takes, plus four further bonus tracks, to the original twelve pieces.

The music was taped at RCA Studios in Chicago around October 1956, with Sun Ra on piano and electric piano and the arrangements all his own. John Gilmore plays tenor saxophone and Pat Patrick alto and baritone, alongside Art Hoyle on trumpet and Julian Priester on trombone. The rhythm section is Victor Sproles on bass, Wilburn Green on electric bass and Robert Barry and William Cochran on drums, while Jim Herndon's timpani and timbales give the band an unusual percussive colour. Priester also wrote Soft Talk, the only piece not composed by Ra. Alton Abraham is credited as executive producer.

The first disc holds the album as issued. India sets it in motion, followed by the first part of Sunology and Advice to Medics, a brief miniature for electric piano. Kingdom of Not and Blues at Midnight drive forward behind Gilmore's tenor. The disc ends with two extras, Journey to Discland and the single October. The second disc gathers the alternates, among them two instrumental takes of Somebody Else's Idea, which Musica Jazz notes later became a vocal feature for June Tyson. Saturn #2, Stratosphere and Space Aura are here too. It closes on Super Blonde (Take 3) and a live Big City Blues recorded at Budland in Chicago.

According to the label, the album was not very well received on release. Impulse! reissued it in 1974 as Super-Sonic Sounds, and the 1991 Evidence CD restored the original title. Reviewing this edition, Musica Jazz heard "a compositional voice marked by striking originality". The magazine also wrote that Space Aura "seems to belong more to Saturn than to Earth".

This edition is a double CD in a tri-fold digipak with a 12-page booklet, Cosmic Myth Records catalogue number CMR-009, released in 2025. It was produced for reissue by Irwin Chusid and Michael D. Anderson and mastered by Joe Lizzi. The digipak reproduces the original 1957 Saturn design, the booklet a later Saturn reissue cover, and the notes are by Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo and Rodger Coleman.