Joey Harrison
Marshall Allen, left, and Danny Davis, 1975
When I was in high school the older brother of a classmate of mine introduced me to The Fugs, Captain Beefheart, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra. I didn't like any of it. It all sounded like noise to me. But, still, I couldn't get the sounds out of my head. After reading a cover story in Rolling Stone (then printed on newsprint), I bought Capt. Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica." It mostly sat at the bottom of a drawer. But every month or so I'd pull it out and try it again. There was something about it that appealed to me, even while another part of me was saying that it was all wrong. Within a year or two I loved the album.
Even though I was already a jazz fan, I had a harder time with Sun Ra. I think that may have been because his recorded output is so spotty. It wasn't until I started seeing the Arkestra live that my admiration really soared.
During the seventies and eighties I saw the band perform many, many times -- in East Lansing, Michigan (where i grew up), in Detroit, in Toronto, in Ann Arbor, in Chicago, and in Boston.
Recently I discovered that reed player Marshall Allen, who first joined Ra back in the 1950s, was born here in Louisville (my new home). With that in mind, I dug out my old negatives from the 1970s and scanned this nice image of him and Danny Davis.
Marshall Allen, left, and Danny Davis, 1975
When I was in high school the older brother of a classmate of mine introduced me to The Fugs, Captain Beefheart, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra. I didn't like any of it. It all sounded like noise to me. But, still, I couldn't get the sounds out of my head. After reading a cover story in Rolling Stone (then printed on newsprint), I bought Capt. Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica." It mostly sat at the bottom of a drawer. But every month or so I'd pull it out and try it again. There was something about it that appealed to me, even while another part of me was saying that it was all wrong. Within a year or two I loved the album.
Even though I was already a jazz fan, I had a harder time with Sun Ra. I think that may have been because his recorded output is so spotty. It wasn't until I started seeing the Arkestra live that my admiration really soared.
During the seventies and eighties I saw the band perform many, many times -- in East Lansing, Michigan (where i grew up), in Detroit, in Toronto, in Ann Arbor, in Chicago, and in Boston.
Recently I discovered that reed player Marshall Allen, who first joined Ra back in the 1950s, was born here in Louisville (my new home). With that in mind, I dug out my old negatives from the 1970s and scanned this nice image of him and Danny Davis.