Saxophone and Flute | 1935-1977

Rahsaan Roland Kirk came to jazz as a teenager playing R&B on weekends in Columbus, Ohio, already blind, already playing two horns simultaneously after a dream told him to. Born Ronald Theodore Kirk in 1935, he discovered the manzello and stritch in his teens, modified all three of his saxophones so they could be fingered at once, and built from that starting point an approach to performance that encompassed circular breathing, improvised narration, political argument, and a deep, scholarly knowledge of the jazz tradition from ragtime through the free avant-garde, all happening in the same set. He recorded prolifically through the Mercury years of the early 1960s, where "We Free Kings" (1961) and "Rip, Rig and Panic" (Limelight, 1965, with Jaki Byard, Richard Davis and Elvin Jones) stand as the strongest entries, before moving to Atlantic for a decade that included "The Inflated Tear" (1967), "Volunteered Slavery" (1969) and "Blacknuss" (1972). He also recorded with Charles Mingus on "Oh Yeah" (Atlantic, 1962). Kirk added "Rahsaan" to his name in 1970 after hearing it in a dream. He suffered a massive stroke in 1975, modified his instruments to play one-handed, and continued performing until a second stroke killed him in December 1977, aged 42.