The Qualities – It’s Christmas Time / Happy New Year To You!

Originally released on Sun Ra’s El Saturn Records, this impossibly rare 7-inch (reissued by Strut Records) contains two holiday barbershop tracks from The Qualities, a mysterious vocal quartet from Chicago that was led by Sun Ra. Ra apparently experimented with vocal groups from the mid-‘50s to the early ‘60s alongside tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, who remembers, “We’d go down to the barber shops and rehearse some groups. Sun Ra had them singin’ some beautiful stuff. I think he probably was saving them from themselves. He heard them, heard their potential, snatched them off the street, and started making them do something constructive.” While these tracks may not be as experimental or avant-garde, there’s still that wonderful Sun Ra experimentalism with the bass singer instructed to playfully imitate the bounce of an upright bass and a joyful woodblock part accenting choice moments on “It’s Christmas Time.”

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