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John Gilmore
Gilmore grew up in Chicago and played clarinet from the age of 14. [1] He took up the tenor saxophone while serving in the United States Air Force from 1948-1952, then pursued a musical career, playing briefly with pianist Earl Hines before encountering Sun Ra in 1953.
For the next four decades, Gilmore recorded and performed almost exclusively with Sun Ra. This was puzzling to some, who noted Gilmore's talent, and thought he could be a major star like John Coltrane or Sonny Rollins. Coltrane, in fact, was impressed with Gilmore's playing, and took informal lessons from him in the late 1950's. Coltrane's epochal, proto-free jazz "Chasin' the Trane" was inspired partly by Gilmore's sound.
In 1957 he co-led with Clifford Jordan a Blue Note date that is regarded as a hard bop classic: Blowing In from Chicago. Horace Silver, Curly Russell, and Art Blakey provided the rhythm section. In the mid-1960s Gilmore toured with the Jazz Messengers and he participated in recording sessions with Paul Bley, Andrew Hill (Andrew! and Compulsion), Pete La Roca (Turkish Women at the Bath), McCoy Tyner (Today and Tomorrow) and a handful of others. In 1970 he co-led a recording with Jamaican trumpeter Dizzy Reece. His main focus throughout, however, remained with the Sun Ra Arkestra.
Gilmore's devotion to Sun Ra was due, in part, to the latter's use of harmony, which Gilmore considered both unique and a logical extension of bebop. Gilmore had stated that Sun Ra was "more stretched out than Monk" [2] and that "I'm not gonna run across anybody who's moving as fast as Sun Ra ... So I just stay where I am." [3]
Gilmore himself made a huge contribution to Sun Ra's recordings and was the Arkestra's leading sideman, being given solos on almost every track on which he appeared. In the Rough Guide to Jazz critic Brian Priestley says:
Gilmore is known for two rather different styles of tenor playing. On performances of a straight ahead post-bop character (which include many of those with Sun Ra), he runs the changes with a fluency and tone halfway between Johnny Griffin and Wardell Gray, and with a rhythmic and motivic approach which he claims influenced Coltrane. On more abstract material, he is capable of long passages based exclusively on high-register squeals. Especially when heard live, Gilmore was one of the few musicians who carried sufficient conviction to encompass both approaches."
Many fans of jazz saxophone consider him to be among the greatest ever, his fame shrouded in the relative anonymity of being a member of Sun Ra's Arkestra. His "straight ahead post-bop" talents are exemplified in his solo on the Arkestra's rendition of "Blue Lou," as seen on Mystery, Mr. Ra.
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Sun Ra: At The Showcase (Live In Chicago, 1976-1977)
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by Troy Dostert
Describing the music of Sun Ra is always challenging--perhaps even more so when it is documented on a live recording. A case in point is this offering from the Jazz Detective label, a substantial slice of Ra taken from two concerts at Chicago's Jazz Showcase in the mid-'70s. It can be dense and opaque, even impenetrable at times. But it also swings mightily, with a generous big-band sound which should appeal to all but the most close- minded jazz listeners. ...
read moreSmall Group Dates from Big Band Leaders: Sun Ra & Duke Ellington
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by David Brown
Welcome friends and neighbors to The Jazz Continuum. Old, new, in, out... wherever the music takes us. Each week, we will explore the elements of jazz and creative music from a historical perspective. In this week's show we take a listen to some small group works from big band leaders Sun Ra and Duke Ellington. And of course, new releases, recent acquisitions and gems from the archives featuring Lester Bowie, Satoko Fujii, Roots Magic and more. Playlist Thelonious ...
read moreSun Ra: Space Is The Place (Music From The Original Soundtrack)
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by Doug Collette
The outlandish persona Sun Ra created and maintained for himself over the years may sometimes distract from the adventurous intent of the music he made. Yet it is testament to his vigorous loyalty to both the music as means of communicating his cosmic ideology and the basic tenets of his unconventional means of creativity that neither theme intruded dangerously upon the other during the course of his sixty-some year career. In a fittingly limited edition run (for both ...
read moreSun Ra & His Intergalactic Solar Arkestra: Space Is The Place (Music From The Original Soundtrack)
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by Mark Corroto
Do not expect The Criterion Collection to reissue the 1974 film Space Is The Place anytime soon. It is though, a cult classic in the truest sense of the word. Sun Ra and his Arkestra had been at the forefront of avant-garde music, developing and refining his vision since the 1950s. Today listeners are most likely acquainted with Ra's claims of being from Saturn and his mission to save our doomed planet. Back in the late 1960s and early 70s ...
read moreSun Ra at Inter-Media Arts, 1991
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by Howard Mandel
On April 10, 1991, the night of this concert at Inter-Media Art Center in Huntington, Long Island, Sun Ra was near the apogee of his earthly transit. Having led his transformative iterations of his Arkestra around the globe for an unlikely if not unimaginable four decades, the visionary composer, keyboardist, conceptualist and cosmologist was, even though in recovery from a stroke, at the peak of his powers, two years from breaking free of his local orbit entirely. He ...
read moreSun Ra: The Futuristic Sounds Of Sun Ra - 60th Anniversary Edition
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by Doug Collette
Produced by Tom Wilson, the same man who also helmed recordings by the Mothers of Invention, Bob Dylan and the Velvet Underground, The Futuristic Sounds Of Sun Ra may belie its title when described as one of the most accessible titles in his lengthy discography. Nonetheless, like its concert companion piece, At Inter-Media Arts, April 1991 (Modern Harmonic, 2016), the relatively concise approach overseen by its famous studio supervisor can reasonably function as the gateway into that vast universe of ...
read moreSun Ra Arkestra: Nothing Is... Completed & Revisited
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by Maurizio Comandini
L'etichetta svizzera Ezz-thetics sta facendo un lavoro eccellente con capolavori degli anni sessanta riproposti in edizione da loro stessi definita 'revisited' che cerca di fare ordine e chiarezza anche su momenti un po' dimenticati che meritano di essere riscoperti e pienamente apprezzati. Tutto questo è ancora più necessario quando ci troviamo alle prese con la discografia di Sun Ra, uno dei primi artisti a scegliere di auto-prodursi con la mitica etichetta Saturn, piena di episodi memorabili ma ...
read moreThinking About John Gilmore
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Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
John Gilmore (1931-1995) was a tenor saxophonist highly regarded by leaders in a wide stylistic range. He worked with Earl Hines, Buster Smith, King Kolax, Miles Davis, B.B. King, and Charles Mingus, among many others. Gilmore was equally comfortable playing mainstream tenor with fellow Chicagoan Red Saunders and exploring the planets with Sun Ra. During his time with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in the first half of the 1960s, Gilmore's front-line partner was trumpeter Lee Morgan. Blakey, bassist Victor Sproles ...
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Away from the Spaceways: John Gilmore
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Source:
Night Lights Classic Jazz
Tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, who influenced John Coltrane and helped to pioneer the challenging techniques of 1960s avant-garde saxophone, spent most of his career with Sun Ra and his Arkestra, recording outside of Sun Ras band on only a handful of occasions. His powerful, edgy style combined aspects of hardbop and outside playing; well hear examples of it with pianists Andrew Hill and Paul Bley, as well as recordings that Gilmore made with McCoy Tyner, Elmo Hope, Pete LaRoca, and ...
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