Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935–1977)

When you hear a good artist at a bar, you think, “Hey, maybe this is the place I should be hangin’-out”. When you hear a great artist, you think, “Maybe I should sell all my stuff and start my life over, maybe even quit my drinkin’ & hangin’-out -- period”. OK, brothers & sisters, somewhere between these two situations is where I find myself w/ this album. As a practical matter, nobody’s going to give it all up to follow the incomparable Rahsaan Roland Kirk, ‘cause he’s been dead for longer than many of you have been alive. Hey, the tracks on this CD are almost a half-century old. But by the same token, rejoice that they are still to be heard: the freshness, the skill, the wit – all are right there for as long as we have recorded sound. So, take a deep drink.
In the interests of full disclosure, I must say right up-front that even a so-so set by Kirk beats the bloody pulp out of most people’s best. While I can’t get quite so crazed over Brother Jack McDuff, I have admired his playing for dekades, and take a special pride in his having been, like me, from Champaign, Illinois. At first blush, the joining of these two artists may seem a little odd, as McDuff, for all his coolness, leans much more toward traditional blues & boogie styles than Kirk, who truly heard the music of other planets. Indeed, the first cut on this album could be most charitably described as good bar music, but not appreciably better than you could have heard then (or still hear now) at a thousand spots. But don’t stop. The cuts are incrementally richer, goofier, and sonically surprising as they go on, so that by the time you get to the unlikely conclusion – “The Skaters’ Waltz – you’d have to be clinically dead not to have big smile on your face.
To achieve transcendant greatness requires, to use an old formula, that the whole be greater than the sum of its parts. It would be misleading to make this claim for this album, but hey, when the parts are as good as this, take 'em and run!… (altro)