Roland Kirk
Bright moments, bright moments for everyone....
I like things from Bach to Roland Kirk… Roland Kirk, that cat, really when you hear it, you can hear so much for the future too. I mean, not necessarily by notes, but you can hear it by feelings.
- Jimi Hendrix
My parents were not big music people. We didn’t have music playing in the house. My dad was tone deaf. My mom didn’t like humming or whistling while working around the house. I didn’t know much about music, except what I heard in old movies I watched on TV, on the car radio, or on a couple of my parent’s albums I liked from the handful in our living room record console. But what I did know was all the songs on one of their albums: The Carousel - the version with Robert Goulet and Mary Grover:
In particular, I liked the song If I Loved You. I think I liked it not so much for the singing, but for the tune and storytelling that goes with it. I was a hopeless romantic. So, many years later, when I heard Roland Kirk’s version of the song from his Bright Moments album, I recognized it, and it struck a deep cord.
Bright Moments was recorded live in 1973 at the iconic Keystone Korner in San Francisco:
Here is Kirk’s take on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s If I Loved You from that album:
Bright Moments was the second Roland Kirk album I picked out of the stacks at “Ground Zero”, right behind his We Free Kings, recorded nearly a decade earlier.
As I fingered through the Jazz albums in the stacks, the We Free Kings album cover struck me. What? He has three saxophones in his mouth. I had to play that one. So the first time I ever heard Roland Kirk play was on the song Three For the Festival from his 1962 We Free Kings:
Here’s that song:
Right out of the gate, I liked it. It was the flute that I noticed most, which reminded me of two flute songs that immediately struck me when I first heard them a few years earlier in high school - before I ever knew what jazz was.
The first was Johnny Almond’s flute on The Laws Must Change from John Mayall’s 1969 drummerless The Turning Point album:
The second was Ian Anderson’s flute on Serenade to a Cuckoo from Jethro Tull’s 1969 debut album This Was. Incidentally, Serenade to a Cuckoo is a Roland Kirk song from his 1965 I Talk with the Spirits album.
It was after hearing Three For The Festival in “Ground Zero” in 1985 that I realized the profound influence Roland Kirk had on late 1960s rock and roll. I realized then he was someone important. From that time on, I always keep my ears open for Roland Kirk.
After all these years of listening, I think the thing that amazes me most about Roland Kirk is how he held such a strong sense of the tradition - for dixieland and the blues - and, at the same time, he was so influential in the development of not only jazz, but modern rock and roll and pop music.
Here he is playing with the great blues master Sonny Boy Williamson in a 1963 live concert in Copenhagen.
He also often paid musical respects to great jazz figures like Duke Ellington and Fats Waller. Here is Kirk’s fine version of Waller’s Jitterbug Waltz, also from his live recording Bright Moments:
In 1965, Kirk recorded Rip, Rig, and Panic. It featured what many consider his best rhythm section with Jaki Byard on piano, Richard Davis on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. From that album and dedicated to my musical mentor, here is No Tonic Pres:
In his lifetime, critics usually put Roland Kirk down as an eclectic and trickster, who exploited jazz music, but I find that a harsh judgement on a man whose creativity exploited jazz, and in particular black music, for such good purpose.
Here’s one more for the road. Kirk suffered a stroke in 1975, but this did not stop him from performing. I find this October 1976 performance in Dortmund, Germany of his Theme For The Eulipions with Gil Evans Orchestra, playing with only one hand, a testament to Roland Kirk’s indomitable and beautiful spirit.
When asked about his massive stroke, he said, “…that happened. That’s over with. That’s done. Now bright moments, bright moments everyone.” Tragically, Kirk suffered a second stroke and died on December 5, 1977. He was only 42 years old.
During Black Music Month, we need to pay homage to Roland Kirk for the many bright moments, in his all too short life, that he shared with all of us.
Next week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in and explore the deep waters of Nina Simone.
Coffee time, my dreamy friend, it's coffee time
Let's listen to some jazz and rhyme
And have a cup of coffee
Let me show a little coffee house I know
Where all the new Bohemians go
To have a cup of coffee
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Until then, keep on walking….