Sun Ra: Interviews & Essays by John Sinclair

Author:John Sinclair [Sinclair, John]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781900486965
Publisher: Headpress
Published: 2013-09-11T04:00:00+00:00

“ON OCTOBER 18TH OF 1977, Sun Ra gave me the position as director of archives,” says Anderson, “because he and Alton at that point had a, we’ll say a disagreement, and that’s when we started pressing stuff at the house. I used to do transfers of reels for him when I worked at WRTI at Temple University. Relative to the Pharoah Sanders situation, the whole concert was recorded, two sets, but the remainder of the concert footage is distorted very badly. But from back in the seventies, I still had the actual mono reel used to press the record, and I did some research with [Abraham associate and El Saturn founding member] James Bryant in the late nineties. He’d send me tapes to inventory. They were out of their boxes, no information on them, but I have a photographic memory and I was able to listen to the reels and recognize that it was more material from that concert. I sat on that stuff for almost fifteen years. But since Sonny’s legacy is starting to be swept under the carpet, I started to pull out some of this material and I’m trying to get things together to release some material that will benefit the band, since Marshall’s having some trouble getting the bills paid.”

Anderson has access to more unheard Ra material than anyone else on the planet. “I’ve been in the shadows for over thirty years, because Sun Ra wanted it that way,” says Anderson, who came to the band as a troubled teenager in the mid seventies and who immediately impressed Ra by taking the initiative to keep the band’s recorded material in order. “Sonny was my surrogate father. June [Tyson, Arkestra vocalist] was my surrogate mother. They took me in. Marshall was like my uncle. John [Gilmore], all those guys, they adopted me. And I miss ’em all.”

Anderson hopes to issue more material but is adamant that any such releases must be done properly. “There’s a lot of shit to come out, and we’re trying to get things together legally and financially such that I can go ahead and do what I need to do. If people are willing to work with me, I’ll work with them. If not, I was told to ’burn it up.’ See, in the seventies, I was known as ’the saboteur.’ Because people were stealing tapes from the house, and because of my editing experience, Sonny instructed me to cut up the tapes. I could spread out a session over nine reels. [Later, when] Alton and James Bryant were sending me stuff, I could put it all back together because I had taken them apart in the first place and knew what I did. I hated that job, I was like the damn grim reaper. I’m like, ’Sonny! I can’t do it!’ but he said, ’that’s your job, that’s your discipline.’ And what could I say but ’ok, I’ll do it.’ ”

Suddenly, our call is interrupted. “Hello? Are you there?” he says. “Yes? Hello?” It seems I can hear him, but he can’t hear me.

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