Sun Ra loved the joyous music from Walt Disney’s animated films. He did so without irony. He performed these songs with his legendary Arkestra over many years, in many venues, and each performance was unique. At one 1989 concert in SF, he actually called his band “Sun Ra and his Disney Odyssey Adventure Arkestra.”

This album presents a small sample of Sun Ra exploring the Disneysphere. All tracks but one were recorded at concerts and club dates. With the exception of “Marching Pink Elephants,” recorded at Variety Studios for producer Hal Willner’s 1988 Disney tribute album STAY AWAKE, Ra never recorded studio versions of Disney repertoire.

The songs are from such classics as Peter Pan, Babes in Toyland, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs, Dumbo, Mary Poppins, and Song of the South. There are countless ad hoc recordings of Ra performing Disney tunes, but the audio quality is often dodgy, since these were recorded by fans. For this collection, we curated the best professional-quality recordings of Ra performing Disney.