Description:
This blind multi-instrumentalist's first Atlantic album, released in 1968, was closer to the jazz mainstream than his live performances, employing a fairly conventional piano-bass-drums trio. It was Kirk's own playing that usually shifted his music's accent towards the other-worldly. "The Black And Crazy Blues" is a slow-dragging update of a New Orleans funeral dirge, the tune Kirk intended for use during his own cremation, prior to his ashes being smoked in the joints of his mourners ... Roland's party piece was to insert two or three horns in his mouth at the same time. This was no cheap novelty trick, but rather an
This blind multi-instrumentalist's first Atlantic album, released in 1968, was closer to the jazz mainstream than his live performances, employing a fairly conventional piano-bass-drums trio. It was Kirk's own playing that usually shifted his music's accent towards the other-worldly. "The Black And Crazy Blues" is a slow-dragging update of a New Orleans funeral dirge, the tune Kirk intended for use during his own cremation, prior to his ashes being smoked in the joints of his mourners ... Roland's party piece was to insert two or three horns in his mouth at the same time. This was no cheap novelty trick, but rather an integral part of his improvisational technique. Aside from tenor saxophone, clarinet and flute, he was also fluent on unfamiliar horns like the manzello, stritch and flexafone, all three used to create the title track's recurrent fanfare, unpredictably interrupting his own oleaginous tenor glide. "A Laugh For Rory" features bobbing flute, propelled by the shimmering ride cymbal of Jimmy Hopps, his drumming very distinctive throughout. "Many Blessings" picks out some solo tenor gristle, then Ellington's "Creole Love Call" develops a burred sax/clarinet saunter, the album closing with "I'm Glad There Is You", a brief bonus cut lifted from the same sessions. --Martin Longley
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Manufacturer: Atlantic / Wea
Release date: 25 October 1990
Number of discs: 1
EAN: 0075679004529 UPC: 075679004529
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