Sun Ra Sundays by Rodger Coleman: Coming This Fall

Coming this fall: a newly-edited open access edition of Sun Ra Sundays by Rodger Coleman, edited by yours truly. This edition will be published by the Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. From 2006 to 2016, Rodger cranked out detailed analyses of Ra's recordings on his blog NuVoid--and not just the official ones or the obscure ones, but also the unreleased ones. While not exhaustive, Rodger's blog entries, tagged "Sun Ra Sunday," does cover the period from 1961 to 1979 pretty conclusively, putting the recordings in biographical and historic context with a keen critical eye from a  musician's perspective. The new edition features almost all of the original Sun Ra Sunday blog postings, corrected, consolidated, and arranged in chronological order by date of release. Rodger has also written a new Foreword, and I have contributed an Introduction, an Epilogue briefly covering some of the recordings Rodger didn't write about, a list of "Core Recordings," and a Bibliography.

Editing this work, going over it with a fine-tooth comb to tweak it and make it ready for prime time, has reiterated for me just how groundbreaking Rodger's work was. His writing is concise, informative, and entertaining...and the subject matter, of course, is near and dear to my heart.

Rodger's original blog is still out there. There are also two PDF versions already on the web as well: one put together by Irwin Chusid, arranged in the order the entries originally appeared on the blog, and one done by me, arranged chronologically by release but otherwise untouched . This new version will supersede them all. The image above is a preliminary mockup of the cover.