Sun Ra: Art on Saturn : The Album Cover Art of Sun Ra's Saturn Label

Considered the foremost exponent of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra mastered a wide array of styles that spanned jazz, R&B, experimental, and chamber works. In his 45-year recording career, he issued an epic number of albums and was one of the first Black musicians to own an independent label, which he named Saturn, after the planet on which he claimed to have been born. The covers of Saturn LPs, issued from 1957 to 1988, are iconic―some rolled off commercial printing presses but many were hand-crafted and were sold at concerts, club dates, and by mail order. As collectibles, original handmade Saturn covers sell for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars. More than just packaging for a slab of vinyl, they are works of art in their own right. Sun Ra: Art on Saturn is the first comprehensive collection of all Saturn printed covers, along with hundreds of the best hand-designed, one-of-a-kind sleeves and disc labels, decorated by Ra himself and members of his Arkestra. Essays by Ra preservationist Irwin Chusid, noted Ra scholar John Corbett, and Glenn Jones, who signed Ra to a distribution deal that put countless homemade covers into circulation, add insights into the interplanetary life and work of Sun Ra and his Saturn partner Alton Abraham.

Le Sony'r Ra, better known as Sun Ra (1914-1993), was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific output, and theatrical performances.

Irwin Chusid is a journalist, music historian, radio personality and self-described “landmark preservationist" based in Hoboken, NJ. Since 1975, Chusid has been a DJ on free-form radio station WFMU in New Jersey and he is the author of Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music. He has produced landmark reissues of the music of composer/bandleader/electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott, Space Age Pop avatar Esquivel, the Langley Schools Music Project, and has salvaged the careers of now-celebrated icons like Jim Flora.


Chris Reisman is a longtime record collector and proprietor of Hudson Valley Vinyl in Beacon, NY.