Sun Ra's first album was produced in 1956-57 by Tom Wilson for the legendary—and short-lived—Transition Records label. Wilson was fresh out of Harvard (he graduated cum laude in 1955) and launched the Cambridge-based label with audacious early recording dates by Donald Byrd, Cecil Taylor, Jay Migliori, Doug Watkins, Paul Chambers, Pepper Adams, Curtis Fuller, and Louis Smith. (Not all recordings were issued at the time.) How he hooked up with Ra—then based in Chicago and virtually unknown elsewhere—is a bit of a mystery.

The set was recorded in July 1956 and issued in 1957. Sun Ra had only recently formed and named the Arkestra, although he had been working with these players on and off for a number of years. The styles shift from hard bop to Third Stream, from Exotica to Ra's emerging concept of Space Jazz. Although the album received very little notice at the time of its original release, it served as a foundational statement for Sun Ra and hints at what was to come.

Transition went out of business in 1958, the recorded masters were sold to various established labels, and Wilson went on to a legendary career as a producer at Savoy, United Artists, Columbia, and MGM-Verve. Along the way he produced the first two albums by both the Mothers of Invention and the Velvet Underground, as well as the debut of Simon and Garfunkel and four Bob Dylan albums.

• 1 Brainville
• 2 Call for All Demons
• 3 Transition
• 4 Possession
• 5 Street Named Hell
• 6 Lullaby for Realville
• 7 Future
• 8 Swing a Little Taste
• 9 New Horizons
• 10 Fall Off the Log
• 11 Sun Song