Even more singles

There are even more Sun Ra singles than anyone thought. Thanks to Richard Wilkinson (Ra road manager for many years, part-time recording engineer, light show operator, and husband of June Tyson) we now know more about the single initially reported by Urs Berger. It's Saturn Disco 2100 (actually, there's not even a Saturn logo on the minimal label). 2100A is an edited version of Disco 3000, retitled Disco 2100 (cute, huh?). 2100B is an untitled blues from the January 1978 Italian tour. Then there's the Saturn subsidiary (!?) Repeto, which specialized in R&B and blues in the late 1960s. Repeto 436, Lacy Gibson: The Sky Is Crying/ She's My Baby. Repeto K702, Lacy Gibson: I'm Gonna Unmask the Batman/ I Want an Easy Woman. (The first recording of Unmask the Batman! Sun Ra is probably not on the Gibson sides, but having not heard them yet I don't want to go too far out on a limb...) Repeto 4223, Walt Dunn: When You're in Love This Way/ Perfidious Lover. Apparently this is schmaltzy R&B sung by Dunn, but with Ra on piano. Wilkinson also pointed me toward T. S. Mims Jr., who produced My Brother the Wind I and Night of the Purple Moon. Both were recorded at Variety Recording Studio in New York City (Ra's favorite for many years). Mims says that MBWI was Ra's first encounter with a Moog synthesizer in the studio (it may not even have been a mini- Moog--in any case Ra hadn't received his own mini-Moog yet). A guy named Gershon Kingsley was frantically programming the thing whenever Sunny wasn't playing it. When Ra finished the session, Mims still had the synthesizer (actually two of them) and some session time remaining. He says he called Herbie Hancock and invited him to record on the synthesizers--but Herbie couldn't be bothered. Herbie wasn't ready to do Headhunters yet... rlc