LP-669

Roland Kirk - Introducing Roland Kirk

Released 1960

Recording and Session Information

Roland Kirk Quintet
Ira Sullivan, trumpet; tenor saxophone; Rahsaan Roland Kirk, tenor saxophone, stritch, manzello, whistle; Ron Burton (as William Burton), piano, organ; Raphael Donald Garrett, bass; Gerald "Sonny" Brown, drums
Chicago, June 7, 1960

10249 Jack the Ripper
10250 Spirit girl
10251 Our waltz
10252 The call
10253 Soul station
10254 Love is here to stay

Track Listing

The Call	Kirk	June 7 1960
Soul Station	Kirk	June 7 1960
Our Waltz	D. Rose	June 7 1960
Our Love Is Here To Stay	Gershwin & Gershwin	June 7 1960
Spirit Girl	Kirk	June 7 1960
Jack The Ripper	Burton	June 7 1960

Liner Notes

"HELLO? This is Roland Kirk,", said the apprehensive long-distance voice. "Ira Sullivan said to call you about coming up to play one of your sessions. We jammed together here in Louisville last week."

After overcoming my apprehensiveness (garnered through years of hearing "cats that had jammed with. etc.") arrangements were made and Roland Kirk did indeed play one of my sessions. Johnny Griffin was on the stand when Roland, his pianist, William Burton, his drummer, Sonny Brown (both heard herein), AND his THREE HORNS AND entered upon the heated scene. He's been keeping that scene equally heated ever since! When he burst upon Chicago he created as much or more excitement than many of the top name artists that have performed at my sessions throughout the years. He almost immediately equaled in populatity my mainstay draw attractions, Ira Sullivan, Johnny Griffin, and Gene Ammons.

Roland is 24 years of age, is from Columbus, Ohio, is blind, and has mastered the techniquc of playing up to three saxophones simultaneously!

The horns concerned are the standard tenor sax; the manzello, a sort of enlarged Sherlock Holmes pipe, related to the soprano sax (but in certain ranges also suggestive of trumpet and oboe sounds); and the strich, a straight version of almost an alto sax. He also uses a siren whistle for certain effects and signals to the other band members, and plays flute as well.

He uses no special harness, just three separate and quite ordinary saxophone neck straps. The manzello hangs around his neck tucked horizontally under his right arm while he plays either the tenor or elongated strich in legitimate fashion, and then suddenly it is flipped out and up into Roland's waiting embouchure to provide a double voicing. Other times, as in The Call, all three horns are tucked tightly in Roland's mouth as he distributes his hands back and forth amongst them creating moving lines and varying chord structures.

At times Roland sticks to one horn, as he does here on his beautiful manzello version of Our Love Is Here To Stay. The two-horn approach is not only used to create exciting backgrounds for other soloists, as behind Ira's trumpet on Spirit Girl, but is also used during Roland's own solos to switch him from one horn to another, creating the impression of two different soloists. In The Call, for example, during Roland's tenor solo he flips in the manzello with the tenor to provide a hooting chord then lets the tenor hang limp and continues full blast on the manzello.

Some important events have occurred for Roland Kirk since he first played that "cooker" for me; an important engagement at the Sutherland Lounge (one of Chicago's top jazz clubs) with his co-star Ira Sullivan; his placing second as a "New Star" in the miscellaneous instruments category of the 1960 International Down Beat Critics Poll; and a full page feature article in Down Beat (Aug. 4. 1960). Some quotes from that article about this record date seem in order:

"It turned out to be one of the wildest dates engineers and bystanders could remember. In ensemble passages, two lone horn men were creating an astonishing variety of voicings. Sometimes Kirk would be pushing out chords on his three horns with Sullivan's trumpet or his tenor to add a fourth. Sometimes Kirk would do it the conservative way: he'd play only two horns in ensembles.

"Then came the real kicker: as Sullivan took off on a stomping tenor solo ("I consider myself closer to mainstream than anything"), Kirk would take the siren whistle hung around his neck on a string and let out a wild blast.

"I quit using my whistle because cats put me down for it at sessions. They think it's a gimmick. But it's not. I hear sirens and things in my head when I play. Imet a cat said he could make me a great big one..."

"One observer in the control room gave an apt description of Kirk: 'He has all the wild, untutored quality of a street musician coupled with the subtlety of a modern jazz man."

"When the session was over, Argo recording director Jack Tracy gave his view of Roland Kirk.

'I didn't record him because he's got a gimmick," Tracy said. "I like the way he plays. He's got something to say. But let's face it, a guy who plays three horns at once isn't exactly bad commercially."

All in all, for me, and I trust for you, the new Roland Kirk fan, this LP will provide an intriguing and exciting venture into a further road of exploratory jazz.

Joe Segal