Let’s get one thing straight: An RRK album is all about Rahsaan. Coming right off of the otherworldly philosophical beast that was Rip Rig Panic, Rahsaan was out to prove to the world that he could sit in the groove with the best of them. Find album reviews, stream songs, credits and award information for Rip, Rig and Panic - Rahsaan Roland Kirk on AllMusic - 1965 - Despite its brevity, Rip, Rig,.
'Before the issue of, Rahsaan Roland Kirk was already exploring ways in which to make soul and R&B rub up against jazz and come out sounding like deep-heart party music. Volunteered Slavery, with its beat/African chanted poetry and post-bop blues ethos was certainly the first strike in the right direction. With a band that included on trumpet, on trombone, organist, bassist, drummers and, as well as, Kirk made it work. From the stinging blues call and response of the tile track through the killer modern creative choir jam on 'Spirits Up Above' taking a small cue from 's. But it's when Kirk moves into the covers, of 'My Cherie Amour,' 'I Say a Little Prayer,' and the medley of 'Afro Blue,' 'Lush Life,' and 'Bessie's Blues,' that Kirk sets it all in context: how the simplest melody that makes a record that sells millions and touches people emotionally, can be filled with the same heart as a modal, intricate masterpiece that gets a few thousand people to open up enough that they don't think the same way anymore. For Kirk, this is all part of the black musical experience. Granted, on Volunteered Slavery he's a little more formal than he would be on, but it's the beginning of the vein he's mining.
And when the album reaches its end on 'Three for the Festival,' Kirk proves that he is indeed the master of any music he plays because his sense of harmony, rhythm, and melody comes not only from the masters acknowledged, but also from the collective heart of the people the masters touched. It's just awesome.' -allmusic.com 'From its opening bars, with 's bass and Rahsaan's flute passionately playing ' 'Ain't No Sunshine,' you know this isn't an ordinary Kirk album (were any of them?). As the string section, electric piano, percussion, and 's guitar slip in the back door, one can feel the deep soul groove Kirk is bringing to the jazz fore here. As the tune fades just two and a half minutes later, the scream of Kirk's tenor comes wailing through the intro of 's 'What's Goin' On,' with a funk backdrop and no wink in the corner - he's serious.
With 's drums kicking it, the strings developing into a wall of tension in the backing mix, and 's trumpet hurling the long line back at Kirk, all bets are off - especially when they medley the mother into 'Mercy Mercy Me.' By the time they reach the end of ' 'I Love You, Yes I Do,' with the whistles, gongs, shouting, soul crooning, deep groove hustling, and greasy funk dripping from every sweet-assed note, the record could be over because the world has already turned over and surrendered - and the album is only ten minutes old! Blacknuss, like, and, is Kirk at his most visionary. He took the pop out of pop and made it Great Black Music.
![Rahsaan Rahsaan](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_rtY-2ZOt8fM/TGIbGcTMTWI/AAAAAAAANOE/cHezFx8MKlQ/s320/63.jpg)
He took the jazz world down a peg to make it feel its roots in the people's music, and consequently made great jazz from pop tunes in the same way his forbears did with Broadway show tunes. While the entire album shines like a big black sun, the other standouts include a deeply moving read of 'My Girl' and a version of 'The Old Rugged Cross' that takes it back forever from those white fundamentalists who took all the blood and sweat from its grain and replaced them with cheap tin and collection plates. On Kirk's version, grace doesn't come cheap, though you can certainly be a poor person to receive it. Ladies and gents, Blacknuss is as deep as a soul record can be and as hot as a jazz record has any right to call itself. A work of sheer blacknuss!' - allmusic.com 'Roland Kirk and his band - which, along with his normal companions on tuba, on trombone, on piano, and on bass, added on violin, on conga, on celeste and piano, and on various sound objects to the mix - once more indulge his obsession with creating modern day 'black classical music.' Recorded on one night - Christmas Eve 1969, two days before Johnny Hodges died - this is one of the weirdest records Kirk ever recorded, but it certainly has merit.
Beginning with a 17-minute conceptual suite called 'The Seeker,' this was classical music Kirk style. The fact that his music here careens from vanguard atonalities to deep swinging blues grooves and wide-ranging color orchestrations worthy of is part of the Kirk paradox: If you hate it, wait a second - it'll change. Other tracks here include a steamy 'Satin Doll,' a bluesy, mood-driven 'Sweet Fire,' and an almost obscene 'Baby Let Me Shake Your Tree,' all played with a host of horns in Kirk's mouth, all playing either ostinato or soloing at the same time, splitting the lobes as he called it, and all of them directing a very tight, wildly celebratory band. Rahsaan was the king of the riff - he could use it until it bit you - and once it did he was off and running someplace else, down on the hard-swinging outer spaceways of his mind and heart.' - allmusic.com 'The title of this album, Left and Right, no doubt refers to the sides of Rahsaan Roland Kirk's brain, which were both heavily taxed in the composing, arranging, conducting, and playing of this recording.
For starters, the band is huge - 17 players plus a 16-piece string section, all of it arranged and conducted by Kirk, a blind man. None of this would matter a damn if this weren't such a badass platter. Along with Kirk's usual crew of, and, there are luminaries in the crowd including on harp, on baritone saxophone, and no less than helping out on the skins. What it all means is this: The man who surprised and outraged everybody on the scene - as well as blew most away - was at it again here in 'Expansions,' his wildly ambitious and swinging post- suite, which has 'Black Mystery Has Been Revealed' as its prelude. While there are other tracks on this record, this suite is its centerpiece and masterpiece - despite killer readings of 's 'A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing' and 'Quintessence.'
'Expansions' has Kirk putting his entire harmonic range on display, and all of the timbral extensions he used in his own playing are charted for a string section to articulate. There are subtleties, of course, which come off as merely tonal variations in extant harmony with the other instruments, but when they are juxtaposed against a portrayal of the entire history of jazz - from to the present day - then they become something else: the storytellers, the timbres, and the chromatic extensions that point in the right direction and get listeners to stop in the right places.
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This is an extreme for Rahsaan - extremely brilliant and thoroughly accessible.' - allmusic.com and, is not the blowing fest one might expect upon hearing it for the first time. In fact, producer and label boss weren't prepared for it either. Kirk had come to Atlantic from Emarcy after recording his swan song for them, the gorgeous, in April. In November Kirk decided to take his quartet of pianist, bassist, and drummer and lead them through a deeply introspective, slightly melancholy program based in the blues and in the groove traditions of the mid-'60s. Kirk himself used the flutes, the strich, the Manzello, whistle, clarinet, saxophones, and more - the very instruments that had created his individual sound, especially when some of them were played together, and the very things that jazz critics (some of whom later grew to love him) castigated him for.
Well, after hearing the restrained and elegantly layered 'Black and Crazy Blues,' the stunning rendered 'Creole Love Call,' the knife-deep soul in 'The Inflated Tear,' and the twisting in the wind lyricism of 'Fly by Night,' they were convinced - and rightfully so. Roland Kirk won over the masses with this one too, selling over 10,000 copies in the first year. This is Roland Kirk at his most poised and visionary; his reading of jazz harmony and fickle sonances are nearly without peer. And only understood in the way Kirk did.
That evidence is here also. If you are looking for a place to start with Kirk, this is it.' - allmusic.com.