Sleeping Beauty is the only Sun Ra album I consistently put on when I want to fall asleep. It’s probably the quietest, most peaceful item in the audio universe that is Sun Ra’s discography. At this point in his career, Ra was recording material for five hour blocks, editing the best parts into an album, and then releasing them almost immediately. Three full-band Sun Ra/Arkestra LPs were released in 1979, with Sleeping Beauty on Ra’s own infamous Saturn Records label. I say infamous because for some albums he only pressed 75 copies. On others, maybe one side of a record was from a completely different recording session put out ten years earlier. Such is the mythology surrounding Sun Ra’s status as a DIY distributor of his own catalog.
The music on this album comes at a time when the disco/soul/funk of Sun Ra’s hometown (Philly Soul) had become bigger than ever. Besides that influence, Sun Ra and the Arkestra were becoming less and less dependent on the free jazz experiments documented on countless live recordings like 1978’s Media Dream. This isn’t to say that the tracks here don’t still feel formless, they’re just more conventional than what you’d expect. The first track “Springtime Again” lilts along at a slow and tender pace, hinting at Sun Ra’s reoccurring meditations on duality and the transition from winter to spring. The recording breezes along as the 28-piece Arkestra keep the song afloat. Punctuated by Ra’s piano work and the sax solos of veteran Arkestra members Marshall Allen and John Gilmore, the song is a classic in Sun Ra’s catalog.
Track two, the funkier “Door of the Cosmos,” brings to mind concert-favorite “Enlightenment” with a steady dose of chants and hand claps. The spirit of the performance stands out as the song becomes more dependent on bass and guitar. June Tyson’s vocals sound great on this one, and trumpet player Michael Ray also steps up to the plate with one of his best performances. Perhaps more than any other member in the Arkestra though, the song is driven by the subtle off-rhythm snares of drummer Luqman Ali who sounds amazingly in control of the band throughout the whole album.
The title track, taking up all of side two on the original LP, has always been my least favorite of the bunch but there’s still plenty to be said for it. Vibraphones come more into play, the vocals are murkier, and the song is carried along mainly by Sun Ra’s cloudy electric piano riffs as a guide for other members in the Arkestra to find room for their solos. Marshall Allen’s brief solo toward the end of the song is a pretty great representation of two themes that hold the album together: restraint and release. Allen’s stabbing atonal solos might be found on Sun Ra’s earlier work, but here they are squeezed tight and reconfigured for the track, a more traditional big-band-influenced slow-burning space-funk groove. This was the brilliance of Sun Ra as a bandleader; he constantly found ways to reinvent his music with the Arkestra. Sleeping Beauty is just one of many albums to uphold that artistic achievement.
