As the years passed a more or less stable group of musicians developed around him, and his rehearsals become increasingly enigmatic and complex. For one piece he would tell a musician, “You start a four [four-
bar solo]”; then tell another, “You start on the second measure of the first guy’s four.” “It got real mixed up. Sometimes Sun Ra had the whole band soloing; he’d tell the whole band to take four, then there would be two written bars, then the whole band would take four again.”
With control of a big band, how could you not be tempted to do this at least once?