Uncharted Passages

Sun Ra was a master of misdirection. Tape boxes wrongly labelled—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 myth- making, 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.
From a cursory listen to the found tape, it was apparent that Ra and Celestial were rehearsing, trying to lock grooves, forging a musical bond. They weren't creating masterpieces—they were testing their chemistry, with Ra occasionally calling out directions. When the quarter-inch, quarter-track tape was flipped, Celestial had taken a break and Ra vamped four solo numbers on piano, after which Celestial returned and the jam resumed.