Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra

xviii, 476pp, central section of black and white photographic plates. Pictorial laminated light card covers. 8vo. Bump to spine heel; top corner creased, affecting first few pages. Text block edges just starting to tan. Internally neat, clean, bright and tight. This ground-breaking biography considers Sun Ra's music as much as his passionate, often wildly unorthodox views on the galaxy, black people and spiritual matters. With the various incarnations of his inimitable Arkestra, his repertoire ranged from boogie-woogie to swing to be-bop to fusion to New Age, and his influence extended throughout the jazz and rock worlds. While Sun Ra made a lifelong effort to obscure many of the facts of his early years, he did acknowledge that he was born on the planet Saturn.