Dreaming of the Masters

Supersonic Jazz, the first LP issued by Sun Ra's El Saturn label, was released in 1957 and recorded in Chicago the previous year.  The album was assembled from tapes recorded during a number of sessions at Chicago studios RCA Victor and Balkan, and several of the tracks had previously been released by El Saturn as singles. 

Although Sun Ra's musical voice and vision were starting to propel him away from the jazz mainstream, Supersonic Jazz reflects many of the prevailing bebop, Latin, and R&B conventions of the mid-1950s.  

El Is a Sound of Joy opens with a rolling tympani and cymbal, followed by Sun Ra and the band playing a moody, Ellingtonesque passage.  The songs then transitions to a hard-swinging section with hand-clapping and soulful riffs, allowing various band members the opportunity to solo over the theme.  Overall, with the soulful early hard bop sound and the Ellington tributes, the song sounds like it could have fit right in on Charles Mingus's 1959 album Mingus Ah Um.  The song is also the lead-in cut on the 1968 LP Sounds of Joy, which includes other early tracks form the Chicago sessions.

At the time of Supersonic Jazz, Marshall Allen had not yet joined the Arkestra, although longtime members John Gilmore and bassist Ronnie Boykins were already on board.  Julian Priester, who would go on to have a notable recording career of his own, is on trombone, and the gut-bucket baritone sax in the more soulful parts of El Is a Sound of Joy is by Pat Patrick.

Pat Patrick had studied music at DuSable High School in Chicago, where he met bassist Richard Davis and saxophonist John Gilmore.  Patrick first played in one of Sun Ra's bands around 1950 and became a regular member in 1954.  When the Arkestra moved from Chicago to New York in 1961, Patrick joined them and resided for several years in the Arkestra's communal residences in the East Village and later in Philadelphia.  He toured Europe with Sun Ra in 1970 and 1976, and was a frequent member of the Arkestra through 1988. 

Patrick also played with John Coltrane on 1961's Africa/Brass and appeared on several other notable jazz recordings.  

Fun fact: one of Patrick's children, Deval Patrick, went on to become Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

Un-fun fact: Patrick was apparently a terrible father.  In 1960, before moving to New York with Sun Ra, he left his wife and children, and when a four-year-old Deval chased after him while he was moving out of their apartment, Patrick slapped his son away.  Later, he refused to sign Deval's application to Milton Academy in Massachusetts, arguing that Deval would lose his African-American identity there.  Deval, whose tuition was paid by scholarship, was accepted anyway, and saw his father only rarely during his life.

If you play El Is a Sound of Joy all the way through above, you can hear the remaining cuts of Supersonic Jazz, and you can even reboot the gadget back to the beginning of the album and hear the LP from the start. 

You can also follow the links to buy a copy for yourself or send a financial contribution to El Saturn.