May 25, 2020

Celebrate Bob Dylan, Sun Ra, and the Mortal Who Connected Them

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This string of days in late May includes the birthdays of two of the greatest musicians of their times: Bob Dylan (born Robert Zimmerman on May 24, 1941) and Sun Ra (arriving from Saturn, he says, on May 22, 1914).

Both are pseudo-gods, with excellent hagiographies worth indulging in. No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Dylan, is on Netflix; Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise is on iTunes and surprisingly easy to piece together from YouTube clips. Sun Ra has passed. Bob Dylan has not. In fact, we’re blessed to know, as our own Abigail Weinberg wrote when Dylan started releasing his newest project—which began with a nearly 17-minute song about John F. Kennedy’s assassination—that Bob Dylan is not dead yet.

I took a long bike ride over the weekend, digging into Dylan’s late-career, often bemoaned, material. (“Wiggle Wiggle” is still awful, I’m sorry to report, but don’t sleep on “Mississippi,” or, dare I say it, “Froggie Went a-Courtin’,” and I’m fully onboard that the gospel phase from Dylan was actually rad as hell.) After the ride, I sat around after and tried to find a “bad” Sun Ra album. No dice. But I would recommend the sneaky beauty of Solo Keyboards, Minnesota 1978; in particular, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child (Crumar synth).”

Both Sun Ra and Dylan felt frenetic enough to have potentially collaborated. So, the astute researcher I am, I googled “Bob Dylan Sun Ra.” A name popped up: Tom Wilson.

The record producer who shepherded Dylan’s work had also worked on Sun Ra’s debut album. News to me, making me fully not the music nerd, I hope. I knew Wilson vaguely but was sort of astounded he isn’t more widely known. Other credits for him? Oh, nothing big, just the Velvet Underground’s White Light, White Heat, the Mother of Invention’s Freak Out!, and Simon and Garfunkel’s Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Wilson also produced one of my favorite gems of that era, the psych-pop work of Harumi.

Catch the Sun Ra Arkestra’s Songs of Justice performance in limited viewing here—final chance is 11:59 p.m. ET Tuesday.

This post has been edited since appearing in the newsletter to reflect the musicians’ and producer’s birth dates.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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