You don't need me to tell you about Sun Ra. He experienced in 1936 or 1937 (or maybe in the early 1950s) a close encounter of the third kind, and the rest is musical history and pop-culture legend. The 1980 film A Joyful Noise (available through Netflix) is a good introduction to Sun Ra's world, but what interests me about the film is the spotlight given to the late June Tyson (1936-1992), Sun Ra's vocalist. The film includes a sequence showcasing Sun Ra's band, the Arkestra, performing in broad daylight on a rooftop, where June Tyson performs stellarly. Controlled pitch. Accomplished and knowing phrasing. She makes straight the way for Sun Ra and his music.

If you go to Amazon.com, you'll discover there are no recordings of June Tyson – no artifacts to testify to her accomplishment, and yet, in brief snatches from Sun Ra videos and in his recordings, we hear a remarkable talent and woman. I suppose she was one of Sun Ra's acolytes (the Joyful film talks about this), but surely in an afrofuturistic world, she'll be heralded as the siren who opened us up to Sun Ra's all-embracing jazz vision.

Am I wrong to think that June Tyson was to Sun Ra as MC Danny Ray was to James Brown?

Cross-posted in a slightly different form at Tales From the Microbial Laboratory.