I once wrote about the Roland Kirk of the days—”long before he added ‘Rahsaan’ to his name, before he became famous, when he was a tornado roaring out of the Midwest, totally blind and full of insight, playing three saxophones at once, whistles, flute and siren at the ready on a chain around his neck. Kirk was organized turbulence stirring the air with music.”
From his emergence as a major musician in the late 1950s to his death in 1977, Kirk kept the air churning, but his art was never mere concentrated energy. He kept lyricism waiting just beneath the surface sound and fury. In this piece, Kirk gives us the best of both his sides in Vernon Duke’s “A Cabin In The Sky,” that admirable, neglected song. The rhythm section is Tete Monoliou, piano; Tommy Potter, bass; and Kenny Clarke, drums. This was filmed in Milan in 1962. The saxophone Kirk plays is called a stritch.
Have a good weekend.
Oh how I love this! Talk about circular breathing!
The great Roland Kirk: There was only one like him. I saw him in person only a few times but, needless to say, recordings didn’t do justice to his art. Thanks for the post.
Is it untoward (and un-PC) to remark that this is truly “the blind leading the blind”?
Possibly.
Thank you very much for posting this. Fascinating solos by both Mssrs. Montoliu and Kirk. I think that I remember listening to a track from his album called The Inflated Tear as a teenager and not realizing that he played his entire solo in one sustained breath until much later on. Might have the song title wrong, but the solo stuck in my mind along with the title track with him playing on English Horn and a “Handful of Fives,” which was in 5/4, I think.
According to Wikipedia, Mr. Kirk “called his straight Buescher alto a stritch and his modified saxello a manzello; the latter featured a larger-than-usual bell and modified key work.” The stritch seems to have a far larger bell than would a straight alto, from what I can tell by the straight altos and tenors that some manufacturers are making these days. I seem to remember reading in a Down Beat Magazine back in the day that Mr. Kirk found his unusual instruments in a second hand music store or something like that, maybe a pawn shop. No matter what the source, I will take his account as being viable.
Fantastic playing for sure, really glad to see this.