The Last Temptation of Sun Ra

SUN RA (1914-1993) --- a/k/a Le Son yRa a/k/a Sonny a/k/a Herman Blunt or Blount a/k/a the Living Myth a/k/a the Eternal Mister Ree a/k/a other aliases too numerous to mention --- was a jazz keyboardist, composer, bandleader, modern religious visionary and perhaps the most idiosyncratic of all avant-garde jazzmen. He was a native of Birmingham, Alabama (and/or Saturn). According to his biography, Space is the Place: the Life and Times of Sun Ra by John F. Szwed, Sonny left Birmingham in 1946, not to return until his triumphant homecoming in the late 1980s to accept induction into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame and to perform on the stage that was once the Sloss-Sheffield steelworks. However, it has been rumored that there was a secret visit at the end of the summer of 1963, just a few months after the city had been rocked by the famous street demonstrations that made it notorious all over the world as a last bastion of segregationist violence .