Sun Ra guitar?
 

I am a growing fan of the Sun Ra Arkestra. I have some cds and they are great. However, I have seen many pictures of the Arkestra with guitar players, but I have never heard guitar in the recordings. Are there any Sun Ra recordings in which you can hear any cool guitar? thanks.

I have a couple of sun ra LPs and in the credits it says there is a guitar player but I too can't hear it.
Try Strange Strings, this is pretty weird album in which the arkestra members play a whole bunch of string instruments, not normally heard on a sun ra recording, there is even one instrument listed as a moon-guitar.

There are some guitar moments on this:

yeah Sun Ra hardly ever played with guitarists, if i remember right. apparently sonny sharrock turned up to rehearse with the arkestra once but for some reason or other he didn't get to play and never came back again... or something. i don't have my sun ra book to hand so i can't check the facts thoufgh.

i wish i had some sun ra recordings. anyone got any suggestions for one that i buy? (to narrow it down a little bit, i am into really experimental, freeform tyep stuff. but anything goes)

I only have one, so I don't know if I can really recommend it in comparison to others.

But while we're on the subject, what the hell is that sound about 13:04 into Space Is the Place? Is that a girl's voice? That's fucking crazy.

good starting albums:
heliocentric worlds of sun ra vol 1 & 2
Atlantis
solar myth approch vol 1 & 2
space is the place
disco 3000

but you really can't go wrong with any sun ra album.

Yeah it does sound like a voice, a lot of times, arkestra members would make modified instruments and gave them weird names like ancient egyptian infinity drum, neptunian libflecto, moon guitar, etc.

I would add to the above list Angels and Demons at Play and Nothing Is.

Pray tell what is this Disco 3000 you speak of?

like the other guy said it's hard to go wrong with sun ra. if you're looking for the wild stuff though i'd recommend generally checking out his records the from the mid 1960s through to early 1970s.

disco 3000 is an unusual sun ra album in that sun ra worked as a quartet rather than his arkestra, only a saxaphone player, a trumpet player, and percussion player on this album. While sun ra provides synths, and this weird rare keyboard called a crumar mainman. Definitly check it out, it has recently been reissued so it shouldn't be too hard to find.

twould be interesting to hear ra in a smaller group. i'll check that out. thanks for the info.

Aah I only have "when sun comes out" on vinyl. I'm lost as to which one I should get next. There's just too many

in the 80s and 90s he tended to have guitar players. this was the time when he was sort of in retrospective mode. there is some cd from late 80s early 90s live from the knitting factory maybe tho i dont remember the name.

hes got sort of a rap song from the late 70s called nuclear war. its on atavistic.

matt