He officially became Le Sony’r Ra in October 1952 and was known as Sun Ra thereafter. Herman Poole Blount finally rejected his given Earthly name and divined a new dualistic identity by merging his old colloquial name with that of the Egyptian solar deity. He concurrently developed his profound and elaborate cosmology, one that traversed the Omniverse from ancient Egypt to the multiple dimensions of outer space and which became the rubric for his entire artistic venture. Although a busy arranger and accompanist for others, he envisioned leading a new kind of ensemble, one that would embody his radical philosophical and visionary compositional ideas. After moving to Chicago in 1946, he continued these polymathic activities. He also began writing poetry and prose and developed a rapacious appetite for esoteric research. Using his nickname ‘Sonny’ as his first stage name, he formed the sadly unrecorded ‘Sonny Blount Orchestra’, an ensemble which gained a reputation as one of the finest swing bands in Alabama. The following decades saw him develop his pianistic, compositional and band leading skills. Music was Blount’s first and abiding passion but, as a young man, he was also a voracious reader, spending hours in the Magic City’s libraries, poring over tomes documenting world history, Egyptology, poetry and numerous other subjects.
Like countless others, the young Alabamian prodigy Herman Blount had been awed and beguiled by the archaeological discoveries of the early 20th Century around the Nile delta that, once again, thrust ancient Egyptian history and culture into the popular consciousness of the day.