1966 studio album by Sun Ra and his Myth Science Arkestra
Interstellar Low Ways is an album recorded by the American jazz musician Sun Ra and his Myth Science Arkestra, mostly recorded in Chicago, 1960, and released in 1967[1][4][bettersourceneeded] on his own El Saturn label. Originally titled Rocket Number Nine, the album had acquired its present name, and the red-on-white sleeve by Claude Dangerfield, by 1969.[2] The album is known particularly for the two songs featuring chants, "Interplanetary Music" and "Rocket Number Nine Take off for the Planet Venus". These would stay in the Arkestra's repertoire for many years.
Rocket Number Nine points toward the music that the Arkestra would be playing on the lower East Side of New York City. The tenor sax solo isn't the work of John Coltrane in 1962, but of John Gilmore in 1960. And not even Ornette Coleman's bassists were playing like Ronnie Boykins at this date.[1]
—Robert Campbell
Quick Facts Interstellar Low Ways, Studio album by Sun Ra and his Myth Science Arkestra ...
A single, "Space Loneliness" b/w "State Street", was released shortly after the recording sessions. Whilst "State Street" was never released on an album by Ra, it was copyrighted as part of the "Space Loneliness" suite ("Space Loneliness: A Sound Concerto"), along with "Fate in a Pleasant Mood" and "Lights on a Satellite", on July 8, 1960. This single was followed up by another 7-inch from the session, "The Blue Set" b/w "Big City Blues", which wasn't included on any of the Saturn-released Chicago albums.[citation needed]
Trumpeter Phil Cohran later remembered the reaction "Space Loneliness" received when it was played on a local radio station:
When we played it on the radio in 1960 a woman called up the station. She said, "It sounds like something that crawled up from beneath the earth and died when it reached the sunlight."[1]
The Arkestra in 1960; l-r, Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, Ronnie Boykins, Ricky Murray (crouching), Sun Ra, Walter Strickland and Billy Mitchell
The Wonder Inn, Chicago
In June 1960, their manager, Alton Abraham, secured the band a solid booking—their first since the Queen's Mansion gigs[1]—playing first Wednesdays and then five nights a week at the Wonder Inn, at 75th and Cottage Grove in Chicago. Originally billed as "a special added attraction" for July 30, 1960 featuring Sun Ra and his "recording band", Abraham celebrated the engagements by acquiring for the band the entire wardrobe from a local opera company—heavily stocked with capes, puffed sleeves and doublets—that had been discarded after performing William Tell;[5] from here on in, the whole band started to dress for 'Space'.[6] The engagement, lasting until early 1961, "has justly become legendary".[1]
We started [wearing space costumes] back in Chicago. In those days I tried to make the black people, the so-called negroes, conscious of the fact that they live in a changing world. And because I thought that they were left out of everything culturally, that nobody had thought about bringing them in contact with the culture, none of the black leaders did that.... that's why I thought I could make it clear to them that there are other things outside their closed environment. That's what I tried with those clothes. I designed some of them myself. I did it because just by seeing those clothes the people could get an idea of what I meant.[7]
—Sun Ra
On other nights, the Arkestra would wear "purple blazers, white gloves, and beanies with propellers on top that lit up",[5] and would set off robots with flashing lights and wind-up flying saucers into the audience.[8]
Track listing
All songs were written by Sun Ra.
Side one
"Onward" – 3.31
"Somewhere in Space" – 2.56
"Interplanetary Music" – 2.24
"Interstellar Low Ways" – 8.23
Side two
"Space Loneliness" – 4.30
"Space Aura" – 3.08
"Rocket Number Nine Take off for the Planet Venus" – 6.14
On "Space Loneliness", "Somewhere in Space", "Interplanetary Music" and "Rocket Number Nine", recorded at the RCA Studios, Chicago, around June 17, 1960:[1]
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