The most extraordinary thing about this tune is the age of the man who made it. Marshall Allen, the sprightly old fellow you can see capering about in the video, celebrated his 100th birthday almost a year ago.
To mark the occasion he released his first solo album, with the apt title New Dawn.
The multi-instrumentalist Marshall has been in the Sun Ra Arkestra for 70 years and has been its leader since 1995. But all his previous releases have been collaborations, ensuring that this really is his solo debut.
Astonishingly, Allen can still conjure up some ferocious, otherworldly tones on his alto sax and his EWI (a new one to me that stands for Electronic Wind Instrument).
This ethereal ballad, the title track of the album, is very different from the frenzied free jazz chaos he conjures in the Arkestra, adopting a more restrained, sentimental style.
Featuring the vocals of Neneh Cherry, it’s the only vocal track on an album whose veteran musicians like bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, trumpeters Michael Ray and Cecil Brooks, and fellow Arkestra member Knoel Scott, are backed by a full string section.
Allen took over leadership of the Arkestra in the mid-1950s after the deaths of Sun Ra and his immediate successor John Gilmore. He was also a regular collaborator with Babatunde Olatunji, becoming one of the first jazz musicians to fuse the avant-garde with traditional African music.
Born in May 1924 in Louisville, Kentucky, Allen took his first clarinet lessons at the age of ten and at the age of 18 he enlisted for the US Army’s Buffalo Soldiers, immortalised in song by Bob Marley, during World War II.
During his military service he played clarinet and alto sax with the 17th Division Special Service Band and went on to form a trio with pianist Art Simmons and guitarist Don Byas while stationed in Paris.
After the war Allen studied at the Paris Conservatory of Music before returning to America, settling in Chicago and forming his own dance band in 1951, when he also began writing his first original compositions.
He joined the pianist Sun Ra’s legendary Arkestra in 1958, leading its reed section for more than four decades and earning renown as one of the most distinctive and original saxophonists of the postwar era, playing on more than 200 Sun Ra recordings with fellow sax men Gilmore (tenor) and Pat Patrick (baritone).
He also developed his own reed instrument (the “morrow”) by attaching a saxophone mouthpiece to an open-hole wooden body, but neglected to patent his creation, which is now commercially available under different names.
Whenever the Arkestra went on hiatus, Allen moonlighted with Olatunji and his Drums of Passion, even learning to build and play the West African multi-stringed instrument the kora, and – in a very different style -he guested on live dates and recordings headlined by next-generation musicians including jam band Sonic Youth, Phish, electronic maestro Caribou and hip-hop crew Digable Planets.
When Gilmore died in 1995, two years after Sun Ra, Allen assumed control, leading the 18-piece ensemble well into the next millennium, while also giving master classes, lectures, and demonstrations of Sun Ra’s enduring creative principles.