Captain Kirk
The Dog Years of Rahsaan Roland Kirk
by Richard C. Walls
Dog Years in the Fourth Ring (32 Jazz), a potpourri offering of the late
multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1936-1977) is much better than one
might expect considering that its first two discs are made up of previously
unreleased live recordings from the early '60s and early '70s made by an ardent
fan. And disc three of the collection is Kirk's '71 Atlantic album Natural
Black Inventions: Root Strata in toto, a forgotten session that the liner
notes here rather boldly point out "was his worst selling album for the label."
But the sound quality of the bootlegs is generally good, Kirk has been caught
in fine fettle with his range well-represented, and Strata, though a
curio, is worth the revival.
Kirk himself is a curio worth reviving. During the limelight period of his
career, which lasted from 1960's Introducing Roland Kirk until his death
in '77, he was the Rodney Dangerfield of jazz -- while his awesome technical
facility was often admired, real respect was just as often withheld. Kirk's
signature sound, wrought from playing three instruments simultaneously -- tenor
sax, manzello, and stritch (the last two's names alone invite ridicule) -- was
seen as a gimmick, a perception fueled by his use of such auxiliary devices as
nose flute, whistle, siren, and anything else that could be pressed into
service. Then there was his fondness, extensively developed over the years, for
circular breathing, which allowed him to hold a note for up to two hours sans
pause. Nor did it help that he eventually became eerily bicameral, prone to
playing two tonally related but distinct melodies at once.
The tendency was to take Kirk with a grain of salt; his technical prowess
could not be denied but neither could his general nuttiness. Actually, that was
just part of the problem -- if eccentricity alone were grounds for dismissal
then half the jazz pantheon would be wiped out. What raised even more
suspicions among certain critics and listeners was that Kirk was a consummate
entertainer, and a entertainer of a certain showboating and vulgar bent at
that. Listening to the array of live performance on Dog Years one is
struck by the expertise with which he manipulates the audience, the way all
those held notes and long, swirling, pauseless lines and double melodies don't
deepen the emotional content of his music but rather reach out and grab the
listener by the collar like so many. . . stunts. A highlight of
this sort of thing is "I Say a Little Prayer." a 13-minute raucous
medley-in-disguise recorded in Boston in '72, which segues from gospel to
avant-garde, from Warwick/Bacharach pop to Coltrane homage. But this routine is
already available on '69's Volunteered Slavery (Atlantic) in a live at
Newport rendition that is pretty much note-for-note (or at least gesture for
gesture) the same as the Boston one -- an indication of how well-choreographed
some of Kirk's wildman moves actually were.
So Kirk was a little shallow. When Coltrane or Dolphy, say, put you through
the wringer it was for your own good -- history was being made, boundaries
stretched, one's emotional and intellectual capabilities upgraded. But when
Kirk launched an assault and disconnected from his rhythm section in
quadruple-timing ecstasy, it just sounded like fun (and those rhythm sections,
not incidentally, are famously lacking in individual voices -- there was only
one star in the Rahsaan show). The question then remains how much you value
fun.
Kirk was also like a sponge, someone who soaked up the tradition -- years
before tradition-soaking became the standard mode -- then squeezed out his
homages with his customarily furious joy. He could be a sensitive interpreter
of melody when he wanted -- check out "Once in a While" on Rip, Rig &
Panic (Emarcy), or the way on Dog Years his metallic-sounding
manzello adds a seductive dose of bitters to "I Remember Clifford." But more
often the Bechet-to-Trane touchstones just seem another aspect of Kirk's
cleverness.
As for Strata, it features mostly solo Kirk with no overdubs, sounding
variously like a small big band or a free-form collective, seemingly in good
humor and full of appealingly simple melodic ideas. Most of Dog Years,
in fact, is highly appealing. If Kirk's music doesn't wound or challenge like
the greatest jazz, still it's impressively exuberant, energetically eclectic
and, with its pervasive aura of history-ransacking voraciousness, intriguingly
post- modern.