Sun Ra & The Blues Project: Batman & Robin [DOL]

Why you'll love it

This Dol edition comes on 180g vinyl in a gatefold jacket. Behind the comic-book cover, Sun Ra plays organ with Marshall Allen and John Gilmore on saxes, alongside Danny Kalb and Steve Katz of The Blues Project.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Pressed in the EU
• Stereo mix

About the album

In 1966, with Batman on every TV in America, the small Tifton label rushed out a children's album to cash in. It was credited to The Sensational Guitars of Dan & Dale. As far as anyone can tell there was no Dale, and the band in the studio was a wild meeting of jazz and blues rock: Sun Ra on organ, his Arkestra saxophonists Marshall Allen and John Gilmore, and guitarists Danny Kalb and Steve Katz from Al Kooper's Blues Project.

What they made is about half an hour of loose, swinging, fuzzy blues jams. It kicks off with a remake of Neal Hefti's "Batman Theme," then romps through "The Penguin Chase," "Joker Is Wild" and "Batman and Robin Swing," several of them built on borrowed classical themes. "The Riddler's Retreat" sneaks in a few Beatles phrases, and "The Bat Cave" grooves like a cousin of Booker T.'s Green Onions.

Once a curio for collectors, it's been reissued on both sides of the Atlantic and is now a cult classic in its own right. A man who claimed to come from Saturn playing the Batman theme is, we feel, the most natural thing in the world.

Also at Kops: more Sun Ra on vinyl · browse Modern Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Dol (cat# DOL922HG), a reissue of the 1966 album.