There were some intense headgear situations in the Sun Ra Arkestra:
Sun Ra was going through a change: we started jumping around…not like jumping jacks, straight up and down; and it had to be in a specific place. …It seemed to have a special significance for Sun Ra. We started wearing beanies with propellers that lit up. Sun Ra wore a space hat with a light on it. .And [we were] marching and dancing through the audience—a kind of cosmic ring shout
There’s more hat gatekeeping than you might think:
It was at this club that Sonny’s band began to wear a variety of uniforms, including one with green sport shirts, rust-colored pants, and red fezzes such as were worn by black religious sects like the Moors, and even briefly by the Nation of Islam. This was the uniform they were wearing one night at the club when three men stood in the back watch-
ing the band closely; at the break they walked up to the bandstand and,
without identifying themselves, warned them to never wear the fezzes again.