Sun Ra, In Vanguard Of Jazz World, Made Music With Mystic Message

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Sun Ra, the influential pianist and orchestra leader noted for his intergalactic treks into jazz and avant-garde music, died yesterday at Baptist Medical Center-Princeton. He was 79.

He had been hospitalized since Jan. 22 and had suffered a series of strokes and chronic circulatory problems, said hospital spokesman Greg Bryant.

In a career spanning 60 years, he gained wide notice in the jazz world for encompassing everything from bebop and gospel to blues and electronic sounds.

"You know, for years, they've been saying my music is out too far," Ra said in a 1985 Associated Press interview. "But they can't convince all of the people of that, and I bridge the generation gap."

Ra said his songs carry a message, a message to save the world. In his song on nuclear war, the lyrics say: "First come the heat, then come the blast; Nuclear war, radiation; Burn the trees, boil the seas; If you don't care; Who else should care?"

A recent issue of Rolling Stone calls him "the missing link between Duke Ellington and Public Enemy."

The former Herman "Sonny" Blount was already a well known jazz musician when he changed his name to Sun Ra in the 1950s.

He based his new persona on such diverse elements as the Bible, Egyptian mythology, black spiritualism and science fiction. Ra is the name of the Egyptian sun god.

He was a native of Birmingham, where he was born in May 1914, according to some references. But he liked to say he was born on Saturn and was "about 5,000 years old."

Ra played in Fletcher Henderson's band during the mid-1940s and for many years was an active experimentalist in Chicago music circles. He moved to New York in the 1960s and later spent much of his time in Europe.

Starting in 1956, Ra traveled with the Arkestra, a multimedia ensemble that included a large stable of musicians and dancers in extravagant costumes.

In the '60s and '70s he made the LPs "Saturn," "Magic City," "Savoy" and "It's After the End of the World."

In all, he released more than 200 albums. In 1992, the critics' poll at Down Beat magazine selected him winner in the big band category.

"In America, a lot of people don't know about me because most musicians try to be famous or make lots of money or get booking agents and all that," he said in the recent edition of Down Beat. "But I wouldn't fit into some places because a lot of people in America are out of it, you know?"

In the 1985 AP interview, he said he didn't regret not having big-time success on the record charts. The biggest stars, he said, "haven't lived the music I have. It wasn't about the money. It was about the music."