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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.65092
EAN: 9780306808555
ISBN: 0306808552
Label: Da Capo Press
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: August 21, 1998
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Sales Rank: 114089
Studio: Da Capo Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Sun Ra, a.k.a. Herman Poole "Sonny" Blount (1914–1993), has been hailed as "one of the great big-band leaders, pianists, and surrealists of jazz" (New York Times) and as "the missing link between Duke Ellington and Public Enemy" (Rolling Stone). Composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, poet, and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial from Saturn, Sun Ra led his "Intergalactic Arkestra" of thirty-plus musicians in a career that ranged from boogie-woogie and swing to be-bop, free jazz, fusion, and New Age music. This definitive biography reveals the life, philosophy, and musical growth of one of the twentieth century's greatest avant-garde musicians.
Amazon.com Review:
Born Herman Poole Blount in Alabama in 1914, he reinvented himself in the 1950s as Sun Ra, the great surrealist of jazz whose free-form performances with his Arkestra amply justified the description "'jspace music." His mystical beliefs were equally avant-garde; Yale professor John Szwed sympathetically explains some fairly far-out notions as "driven by a hunger for totality that only music could express." Szwed recovers the biographical facts Sun Ra was often at pains to obscure, without losing sight of the overriding role imagination played in this visionary life.
Average Rating: 
Rating: -
Sun Ra has remained one of the most misunderstood musicians of our time. And in the case of many music geniuses, Sun Ra would keep the critics and fans at arm's length, but welcome musicians into his world of philosophy and art.
Author John F. Szwed does an almost impossible task of peeling of the layers of myth and disinformation to present the real life, struggles and triumphs of Sun Ra. Szwed brilliantly weaves through the situations which shaped his life while growing up in Birmingham, ... Read More
Rating:  -
Frankly, Sun Ra seemed to go out of his way to make a biography pretty much impossible. Professor Szwed is to be commended for his effort, though I think at times the professor takes Ra and himself too seriously. It is a hip jazz disease that Ra played off of brilliantly and would have been amused by.
What is of value is you get some idea of the depth of this fellow, the complexity, the seriousness and simultaneous playfull nature. In being too deep or altogether dismissive of him, we missed ... Read More
Rating: -
Great book.
If you have an interest in who Sun Ra was you ought to read this. Not a lot of musical analysis, but an extrordinary explanation of the ideas and philosophies behind it. Good job on the life as well.
I wish the highly-praised Lewis Porter Coltrane biography was a quarter as good as this.
Rating: -
This is, simply put, the greatest jazz biography I have ever read. Sun Ra is a complex and fascinating character, and Szwed's narrative more than lives up to the challenge. The most impressive thing about this book is that Szwed places Ra's, shall we say, bizarre beliefs in a context that makes him seem brilliant, lonely, compassionate, and vulnerable--in a word, human. Interwoven with the facts of Ra's life, his childhood, his musical development, his status as 60s cult icon, Szwed goes into long, fascinating ... Read More
Rating: -
The book is well-written and does what it sets out to do - explain who Sun Ra was and what he was doing. This is no mean feat. Sun Ra was a man of many interests and beliefs, of whom many misconceptions exist. Even most of his fans (I've been listening to Ra's music for about 10 years now) will probably learn much and gain tremendous perspective on him from this book (I certainly did).
The book's story is one of a man with artistic genius within him, who probably could have been a millionaire and ... Read More
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