Starship Orchestra -

Starship Orchestra was an American jazz-funk band that released the 1980 Columbia album Celestial Sky.

Members: Norman Connors, Munyungo Jackson, Ralph Jones, Billy McCoy

Background

Starship Orchestra emerged in the late 1970s as the recording and touring ensemble of Philadelphia drummer and producer Norman Connors.

Arista credited Norman Connors and the Starship Orchestra on the 1977 album This Is Your Life, whose Kendun sessions joined drummer-producer Connors with keyboardists Billy McCoy and Jacques Burvick, soprano saxophonist Ralph “Buzzy” Jones, and a large Los Angeles studio cast. Connors entered the project after a run of Buddah albums that moved his work from post-bop and spiritual jazz toward orchestrated soul and jazz-funk. Burvick already worked with Connors as keyboardist on the 1976 Aquarian Dream album, while McCoy and Jones became recurring players in the Connors organization.

Percussionist Darryl “Munyungo” Jackson came from Los Angeles, where parents Arthur Jackson Jr. and Genie Jackson maintained interests in music, dance, and writing. Jackson studied classical piano through his teens and shifted toward timbales at age seventeen after exposure to Latin jazz. He formed a Latin-jazz group with schoolmates and developed on congas, bongos, and related percussion through recordings by Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo, and Tito Puente.

Starship Orchestra functioned as a Connors concert unit by June 1978, when a Carter Barron Amphitheater bill paired the ensemble with Patti LaBelle in Washington, D.C. Connors took the group to the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 22 for a performance with Pharoah Sanders. Buzzy Jones and Billy McCoy appeared in the Montreux lineup alongside keyboardist Bobby Lyle, trumpeter Duke Jones, guitarist Greg Hill, bassist Alex Blake, conguero Lawrence Killian, and percussionist Petro Bass.

McCoy and Jones remained in the Connors circle on the 1979 Arista album Invitation, which also appeared in editions billed to Norman Connors & the Starship Orchestra. Columbia then separated the Starship Orchestra name for a recording project centered on McCoy, Jones, and Jackson. Connors produced the Kendun sessions with George Butler as executive producer, while Burvick contributed keyboards, backing vocals, compositions, and arrangements. The sessions brought the Connors backing-unit name to the first album billed solely to Starship Orchestra, Celestial Sky.

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