Sun Man Speaks (alternate) - Yochannan with Sun Ra and his Arkestra

Issued on THE SINGLES 2CD (Evidence 22164, 1996) Below info from http://campber.people.clemson.edu/sunra.html From Sonny Blount to Sun Ra: The Chicago Years © Robert L. Campbell, Christopher Trent, and Robert Pruter Sun72 Yochannan (voc) with Sun Ra (Hammond B-3 org); Lucious Randolph (tp); Marshall Allen (as); John Gilmore (ts); Ronnie Boykins (b); unidentified (d). Unidentified studio, Chicago, before June 1961 “The Sun One” was issued in 1961 as side A of Saturn 1502, a 45 rpm single. The first edition of The Earthly Recordings gave the release date as 1959 or 1960, but the side was mastered and pressed by RCA Victor and in the Victor matrix code, the M-prefix stands for 1961. RCA Victor did a test pressing of M09W7841 and 7842 on June 2, 1961 (test pressing report in the Alton Abraham Collection, Box 16 Folder 7); we don't know what 7842 was... Then Saturn sold 100 copies of 1502 to United Record Distributors on September 27, 1961. The originally issued “Sun One” ran about 2:45 and did not include Yochannan's monologue (“On the third moment, the stone was rolled away”). On the tape box it was called “The Man who Flew in from the Sun”; in Yochannan's spoken introduction, it was “The Man that Flew All the Way from the Sun.” For the second issue in 1968 on Saturn 986, a 45 rpm single, a different take was used, under the title “The Sun Man Speaks.” This version included the monologue and 4 and a half minutes. The singer's name was spelled with another “n” (to bring it up to nine letters) and the label referred to “Yochannan with Sun Ra and his Arkestra.” A third version showed up during research on the Saturn singles. It is a shorter, monologue-less performance, but Yochannan varies the lyrics: “I'm back, it's a natural fact.” All three versions were (re)issued in September 1996 on The Singles, Evidence 22164 [2 CDs].

Added 22 May 2026