Sun Ra (1914–1993)

US jazz keyboard player, bandleader, and composer, whose eccentricity matched his avant-garde experimental music. His big band, the Arkestra, formed in the 1950s, combined free-form and traditional jazz, African percussion, and synthesizer effects.

Blount was born in Birmingham, Alabama, studied piano at Alabama A&M University, and then moved to Chicago, where he worked 1946–47 as arranger and pianist for bandleader Fletcher Henderson. Initially known as Sonny, he eventually settled on calling himself Sun Ra, a tribute to the Egyptian god, and started claiming that he came from the planet Saturn, where aliens had taken him in his youth. In 1960 the Arkestra, or Solar Arkestra, relocated to New York.

Sun Ra's broad outlook and pioneering explorations of the Moog synthesizer led to a collaboration with US rock group the MC5 on their 1969 debut; other musicians who cite him as an influence range from funk master George Clinton to art rockers Sonic Youth and British techno producers. Sun Ra's more than 300 compositions were often released on his own Saturn label. They include ‘Brainville’ (1956), ‘Cosmic Explorer’ (1970), and the albums Sound of Joy (1957) and Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra (1965).