Live at the Fourth Mezinarodni Jazz Festival, Prague, October 19, 1967. Line-up: Roland Kirk - multiple reeds Ron Burton -piano Steve Novosel - bass Jimmy Hopps - drums
This is the side of youtube that is amazing. This incredible footage of Roland Kirk has been rescued from oblivion and presented here. Thanks to the uploader!!!!
That's what still amazes me - not only that he could play three at once, but that he could work out musical phrases that could be done with only two hands to finger them. That is some serious brain there.
I used to work at a liquor store in columbus ohio, a jazz radio voice used to come in on the weekends and school me on jazz. He asked me "why do you even like sun ra? Kirk is where its at!" He told me several stories about Kirk(also from columbus ohio) one being quite memorable......Roland Kirk used to be a clerk at this record store in Columbus and being blind, people used to go in to buy a record and would have to tell him what the record was, ad the price tag, and even tell him what bill they gave him, and if the change was correct or not! The punchline is, he was never, NOT ONCE ripped off or lied to!
Thanks I used to follow him around in Montreal: from the Esquire Show Bar to the Prag Café to other joints. Totally amazing-he loved guitarist Nelson Simons in Montreal.
Elle Mimeux I had the honor of playing a gig with both Sun and Rasaan and did they fun. Rasaan even shouted to Ra how surprised he was that I was playing the base line on my congas! Thanks for your tribute to both.
Walk into my brothers house one day, high as can be, and Rahsaan's Inflated tear was playing. To this day I still have no words to describe or articulate in rational terms what I experienced that day. Even now after so many years has gone by this music just make me feel other worldly Thanks for posting.
you have to realize how hard it is to get great tone and stay in tune with three differing mouthpieces like that. Some people called it a gimmick, but he was probably the best saxophone player just about ever. Such an amazing talent. Plus that straight tenor. You just don't see horns like that anymore.
@@jeanhodgson8623 The straight alto was a Buescher from the 1920s that he modified with a wider bell and called the stritch. The third horn (on his right) was a saxello, a curved B-flat soprano that he also altered a bit and called the manzello.
i am a 38 years old and by the way im mexican just to make sure that this kind of tune doesnt say or takes sides just tells you how you feel at the moment makes you feel alive man. cheers everybody
"The inflated tear" by Roland Kirk was an inspiration to me as a guitar player back in the 1960's. I still have the album recording and used to listen to it all the time but forgot about it until I saw the Judas and Black Messiah movie recently.
the first song I ever felt by Mr. Kirk was the black and crazy blues on Seton Hall radio in East Orange NJ. at that moment I felt I discovered real music. when he died in December of 77 I was listening to the radio when they announced his passing. they read his final wishes and he requested that when he dies that he will be cremated and have the ashes mixed with ghanja and smoked while listening to his music.
If you notice, the 'sweet' part of the melody is structurally the same as the 'chaotic' part. The chaotic part is the bare-bones, and the sweet part is fleshed out...
in the late 60’s Kirk was playing a club in Monterey (before I moved to NYC). I was so enamored of his playing I asked him to visit my studio - so the next day we piled in my old VW bus & I drove to this huge deserted old cannery on Cannery Row extending far out over Monterey Bay I was renting for $300 a month. I’d told him my painting were very textural so he carefully felt several & seemed to get something positive.
What's amazing is that he pretty much duplicates the recorded version. I think this guy would have been big as a rock star if anybody had really known about him. Along with Eric Dolphy, one of the great individualists of 20th century jazz.
It's Prague. Culturally 100% normative to respect talent. They didn't even have popcorn in movie theatres at the time--why disturb the viewing experience with crunching?
This is a brother that has been touched by Dexter Gordon. Just too much. I'm crying. He lays that low soul horn so deep that all the extra stuff is but ornamentation. RK had the critical horn basis.
I close my eyes and listen and my mind goes back and away from the here and now. I am sitting on the edge of something, somewhere, but I don't care where or why. And I don't come back until the music stops!
Believe it or not, He could play three horns at the same time. He also played a manzello, a stritch, and various sirens and whistles. I'll never forget it.
I had this main melody stuck in my head for a while and was trying to recall what bigger avant-garde/progressive jazz group was playing that. And then I suddenly remembered it was that significant one man playing three reed instruments sounding like eight players.
Jazz great Tom Scott and his NYU/Steinhardt interviews brought me here. Said that when Tom Scott and the LA Express were hot in the mid-70s, Kirk was their opening act. He was embarrassed by that, saying that Kirk was a “monster” on the horns. This is phenomenal.
I heard his version of jitterbug Waltz for the first time - and now I'm here - what the hell is going on - forget the playing - which I already committed to once hearing his version of the Jitterbug Waltz - just lugging those saxophones around your neck like that is tremendously hard work - trying to find single notes two strings apart and three frets down while not looking - playing one guitar is hard enough - this guy is wearing four instruments and jumping back and forth - a musical warrior.
This tune made me a Jass fiend at 17. Was blessed to hear him live at the Berkeley Jazz festival. Not only was he a Master player, he also was a Prophet.
I would always catch Roland at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach Calif /He was always nice and and answerd all my questions about the music/When you went to see a Roland Kirk performance you got a performance ,,you got his best/Miss you Roland,,miss you bad DD
Great comment -- I use to visit the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach CA -- when it used to be called "Howard Rumsey's Concerts By the Sea" Rahsaan Roland Kirk was a musical genius and will always exist in his music. What a gift and how blessed that he shared this music with us. I only wish the world could have heard him and YES someone should make a movie about his life and his contributions to the world of human communication (music).
Absolutely brilliant! I had seen a guy play two saxophones at one time in a club in San Francisco in the 1990s and I was amazed. Now I can see where he got the idea! Roland Kirk was incredible! It's sad that a couple of strokes caused his death at age 42. :(
So very amazing, with circular breathing to boot. We have such geniuses among us. What a great musical imagination this man had. He said so very much to us, from the invocations of a far away kingdom percussive introduction, to the chanting cries in three parts on the horns so very continental, and to the beautiful great American song book-like ballad, as lovely as it is endlessly yearning all wrapped up into an art music -- transcending all classifications of the meeting of sound and art. Thank you Mr. Kirk for being such an inspiration and bringing tears of sadness and joy to our eyes, exactly what that classical music they call jazz has always been about.
Have been blessed to meet so many great jazz artists, Sun Ra being one, but just wish I had been able to meet this great Muse. What a force of Nature he was.
Downbeat called him, "The Son of Jazz." I was lucky enough to see/hear him twice. At The Bottom Line in NYC Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee opened for him. Incredible night. Thanks for posting.
Just learned about Kirk - dude's amazing!! FWIW, note that this festival was in Prague in '67. Less than a year later, Soviet tanks would be rolling in to quash the Prague Uprising.
Someone told me that he could play multiple saxes at once. He was right, I am amazed. No one else does what Roland Kirk did because they cannot. RIP brother 🙏 Kirk.
The music of Faso is an inexhaustible source of sweetness. It allows us to plunge deep inside ourselves and at the same time resonate with our fellow man, Yé Lassina Coulibaly❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
I had the amazement and pleasure of seeing RRK at the Village Vanguard, NYC around 1972 and did see him play those 3 horns simultaneously as Kirk walked through the audience! He's one of a kind and he is among the greats!
James Gibson It sounds like a gimmick to me. I can hear him struggling to handle the numerous instruments and I don't find that pleasant to listen to. Sounds great when he plays one sax. Don't like my opinion? Too fucking bad.
SO interesting to think of music while watching this as animals with lots of experience messing around with noises entertaining each others with their noise arrangements
I had a musical instrument as a kid that really could have spiced up that intro he did on that bendy piece of metal with attached mallet. We used to have a spring doorstop behind the door way back when I was a kid. When you twanged it, it would go boing, boing, boing. I used to twang it for hours on boring sunday afternoons, until my mom would be about crazy. That spring would have fit right into that intro.
I saw him many years ago at Meadowbrook Theatre on the campus of Oakland University in Rochester , Michigan. What an experience! He had the audience in the palm of his hand. Herbie Hancock came on after him and over half of the people had left probably feeling as I did that there was nothing else to hear that mattered.
A true original-he created his own musical world. I think some didn't understand what he was about. Not a few others tried the multi-horn well-I'm sure Dick-Hexstall Smith was a fan.
![Rahsaan Roland Kirk - The Inflated Tear [Live in Prague, 1967]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
