Monday, August 24, 2009

Sun Ra/Pink Elephants


In the late 1970's, Composer, Pianist, Band Leader and Brother from Another Planet, Sun Ra, became interested in the music in Walt Disney films. His orchestra, The Arkestra, even played a concert at Disney World in the late 1980's.
Composer and arranger, Hal Willner put together a compilation of various artists performing Disney Music on the recording, Stay Awake.
(a pretty interesting record, featuring Aaron Neville, Yma Sumac, Tom Waits among others...)
Sun Ra and the Arkestra performed their version of Pink Elephants on Parade from the animated calssic, Dumbo.
I was just informed of the existence of this video on YouTube, where the Sun Ra recording and the original movie footage was synched together...It really works!
I've posted pieces and short snippets of Sun Ra's life on this blog.
Ra died in 1994, but was an true original whose utter outsidedness was so inside and outside of time that he will keep influencing musicians as long as there is a way to keep his music playing!

No comments: