Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Musician

• Born: August 7, 1936
• Birthplace: Columbus, Ohio
• Died: December 5, 1977
• Place of death: Bloomington, Indiana

American jazz composer, flutist, and saxophonist

By adding a percussive attack, slap-tonguing, breath noises, and humming to his flute playing, Kirk pioneered a new jazz flute aesthetic. He was noted for playing three instruments at once and for his eccentric stage appearances.

Member of The Vibration Society

The Life

Blind from the age of two, Roland Theodore “Rahsaan” Kirk began playing the trumpet at nine, after having heard a bugle boy at a summer camp. He subsequently played trumpet and French horn in the school band. Complying with a doctor’s advice to give up the trumpet because of the pressure the instrument’s playing imposes on the eyes, Kirk took up saxophone and clarinet at the Ohio State School for the Blind in 1948.

By 1951 Kirk was playing professionally the tenor saxophone in several local rhythm-and-blues bands (among them Boyd Moore’s combo and his own group). In the second half of the 1950’s, he worked in Louisville, Kentucky; Nashville, Tennessee; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Indianapolis, Indiana, among other cities in the Midwest, before moving to Chicago in 1960. There he recorded his first jazz album under his own name, Introducing Roland Kirk.

In 1961 Kirk moved to New York. He became part of the Charles Mingus Workshop for three months, and he toured Germany (notably the Essen Jazz Festival) in April and California in December. In 1963 he began his residency at Ronnie Scott’s club in London, an engagement that he repeated nearly every year during the 1960’s. Until his death, Kirk led his own group, the Vibration Society, touring North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand and performing in a multitude of jazz styles.

In the early 1970’s, he was the leader of the Jazz and People’s Movement, an organization for the promotion of black music. In November, 1975, he suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right side. Strong-minded, he developed a technique that allowed him to play his tenor saxophone with one hand, and he resumed performing again in 1976 (notably at the Newport Jazz Festival). A second stroke in December of 1977 caused his death at the age of forty-one.

The Music

Kirk belonged to a group of multi-reed players who emerged during the latter half of the 1950’s. In comparison with fellow musicians Eric Dolphy, Yusef Lateef, James Moody, and Sam Most, Kirk was probably the most eccentric and radical in terms of his aesthetic beliefs.

Around the age of fifteen, Kirk had a prophetic dream in which he played two instruments simultaneously. Some time later, in a music store basement, he came across two seemingly antique wind instruments. The first was called a manzello (a saxello, or a variant of the B-flat soprano saxophone), and the second was a stritch (a modified version of the straight E-flat alto saxophone). He developed a technique that enabled him to play both instruments at the same time, plus a tenor saxophone with modified keys as a bourdon. With his left hand he played the tenor saxophone with “false” fingering, and with his right hand he played the manzello and stritch.

Triple Threat. Kirk used such skills on his first album, Triple Threat, which was strongly influenced by the rhythm-and-blues idiom of the period. From 1960 onward, he expanded his instrumental assortment with a siren whistle (metal hunting horn), clavietta (similar to a melodica), nose flute, piccolo, and “conventional” flute, as well as a series of homemade creations such as the trumpophone (a trumpet with a soprano saxophone mouthpiece), the slidesophone (a miniature trombone with a soprano saxophone mouthpiece), the rokon whistle, puzzle flute, and mystery pipes. At the time of his death, Kirk owned more than forty-five instruments (among them an enormous gong and a foghorn in order to silence an inattentive audience).

Kirk’s Work. His first major achievement was his album Kirk’s Work, with the organist Jack McDuff. The album was a tribute to Dizzy Gillespie, having a title that alludes to the trumpeter’s composition “Birk’s Work” and beginning with a tune called “Three for Dizzy” (“three” referring to the manzello, the stritch, and the tenor saxophone played together). Even though Kirk’s Work is stylistically close to other Prestige and Blue Note albums of the early 1960’s, the tremendous originality of Kirk’s reed playing is evident in every selection. On Kirk’s Work, all his major traits are present, such as playing three instruments at once, as well as soloing on tenor, manzello, stritch, and flute (while simultaneously humming into the flute).

The Mercury Years. Kirk’s output for Mercury Records from 1962 to 1964 is possibly some of the finest yet overlooked jazz music taped in the early to mid-1960’s. It contains such sensitive compositions as “Petite Fleur” (with Kirk on flute) and such Third Stream-influenced works as “Fugue’n and Alludin’” (featuring flute and vibraphone) and a thoughtful rendering of John Lewis’s “Django” (with flute and celesta). Of particular interest are two selections from the album The Roland Kirk Quartet Meets the Benny Golson Orchestra, the complex composition “Variation on a Theme of Hindemith” and the ballad “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.” During the same time, Kirk experimented with such avant-garde techniques as quartertones and nasal timbres (“Abstract Improvisation” on The Roland Kirk Quartet Meets the Benny Golson Orchestra) and multiphonics (“Ecclusiastics” on Mingus: Oh Yeah! in 1961). Furthermore, he perfected the circular breathing technique that allowed him to sustain a single note for an extended period of time or play sixteenth-note runs of extended duration, as demonstrated as early as 1963 in a rendering of Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” (Kirk in Copenhagen) and ten years later in his composition “Saxophone Concerto” (Prepare Thyself to Deal with a Miracle).

The Atlantic Years. While the Mercury recordings were influenced by such post-hard-bop stylists as Sonny Rollins and Golson, the recordings from the Atlantic years (1965-1976) demonstrated the influence of John Coltrane, especially in his approach to the soprano saxophone, on such compositions as “Something for Trane That Trane Could Have Said” (Natural Black Inventions: Roots Strata). On the Atlantic label, Kirk remained faithful to his playing of the manzello, stritch, and tenor saxophone simultaneously, occasionally unaccompanied, so that the three instruments sound like a “human choir” (as on the title track of The Inflated Tear). On the same album, Kirk demonstrated his lasting curiosity for unusual timbres such as the English horn as a solo instrument on the blues-tinged track “The Black and Crazy Blues.” Next to such explorations for uncommon klangfarben, Kirk continued his excellent, often lyrical, and highly original flute soloing on such compositions as “A Laugh for Rory” (The Inflated Tear) and “Anysha” (Other Folks’ Music) on Atlantic, as initiated earlier on Mercury.

African American Identity. Similar to many contemporary African American jazz musicians in late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Kirk expressed his increasing support for the black cause and his growing interest in African American identity by devoting more compositions to African-influenced music, such as “Volunteered Slavery” (on the album with the same title) and “Haunted Feelings,” “Black Root (Back to the Root),” and “Dance of the Lobes” (on Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata).

Musical Legacy

Kirk was firmly rooted in the jazz tradition of his predecessors (Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Sidney Bechet, Ellington, Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, and John Coltrane) and the heritage of the blues, gospel, and soul (Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, and Bill Withers). He introduced several new playing techniques to jazz, and he was the first wind player in the jazz world to use circular breathing. His technique of playing three instruments simultaneously was emulated by Vladimir Chekasin, Michael Marcus, Tim Price, and Dick Heckstall-Smith. Kirk’s use of an array of unconventional instruments may have inspired such saxophonists as Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman from the Art Ensemble of Chicago. This group had in common with Kirk the goal of creating black classical music.

Principal Recordings

albums (solo): Triple Threat, 1956; Introducing Roland Kirk, 1960; Kirk’s Work, 1961 (with Jack McDuff); We Free Kings, 1961; Domino, 1962; Kirk in Copenhagen, 1963; Reeds and Deeds, 1963; Gifts and Messages, 1964; I Talk to the Spirits, 1964; The Roland Kirk Quartet Meets the Benny Golson Orchestra, 1964; Rip, Rig, and Panic, 1965; Slightly Latin, 1965; Funk Underneath, 1967; The Inflated Tear, 1967; Now Please Don’t You Cry, Beautiful Edith, 1967; Left and Right, 1968; Volunteered Slavery, 1968; Blacknuss, 1971; Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata, 1971; A Meeting of the Times, 1972 (with Al Hibbler); The Art of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, 1973; Prepare Thyself to Deal with a Miracle, 1973; The Case of the Three-Sided Dream in Audio Color, 1975; The Return of the 5000 Lb. Man, 1975; Kirkatron, 1976; Other Folks’ Music, 1976; Boogie-Woogie String Along for Real, 1977.

albums (with the Vibration Society): Rahsaan Rahsaan, 1970; The Music of Rahsaan Roland, 1986.

Bibliography

Kurth, John. Bright Moments: The Life and Legacy of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. New York: Welcome Rain, 2000. This useful biographical study incorporates material from a recently discovered audio autobiography by Kirk and interviews conducted by Kurth with Kirk’s contemporaries Quincy Jones, Lateef, and Rollins.