Even in his rhythm and blues days, he was already experimenting with his exotic instruments, and with playing more than one horn at the same time. And if this was originally presented as a gimmick, it was never a gimmick. Hank Crawford first heard him playing as a 14-year-old on the rhythm and blues circuit, and remembers (quoted in Wikipedia):
The other horns Kirk primarily used were the manzello and the stritch. The manzello is a modification of the saxello, itself a modification of the soprano saxophone. The stritch is a modified alto sax, straight like a soprano rather than curving into a bell like conventional alto (the manzello adds a bell to the conventional soprano structure). Playing all three at once, he could do something no other horn player could do: make chords. But he was also a brilliant flute player, and he made use of all sorts of sound-making devices, in the manner of Yusef Lateef (or Spike Jones), but playing all of them himself.He would be like this 14 year-old blind kid playing two horns at once. They would bring him out and he would tear the joint up...Now they had him doing all kinds of goofy stuff but he was playing the two horns and he was playing the shit out of them. He was an original from the beginning.
Kirk's musical knowledge and influences stretched from rhythm and blues to classical, from ragtime to electronic music. So it was interesting that Prestige paired him, for this outing, with a guy who essentially played one thing, though he did it very well.
But why not? I have a theory: given jazz musicians of quality and imagination, there's no such thing as a bad pairing. Here on Listening to Prestige, we've heard Eric Dolphy paired with Juan Amalbert's Latin Jazz Quintet, a session often criticized as "a mismatch, with Dolphy and the quintet paying little attention to each other," but it's not true. They're listening to each other, and their playing is affected by the context, in interesting ways. The same criticism was leveled by critics at Charlie Parker playing with Machito, or by Sonny Rollins with the Modern Jazz Quartet, and it was never true in either of those cases. Just listen, and you'll hear how they're relating to each other.
One of the most delightful jazz singles ever is "Slim's Jam," featuring a dead serious avant gardist (Parker), an irreverent cutup (Slim Gaillard), and a rhythm and bluesman (Jack McVouty, in Gaillard's language, McVea in anyone else's). And how about the Birth of the Cool nonet, who made some of the tightest, most trailblazing music in jazz history, led by Miles Davis, Lee Konitz (RIP), Gerry Mulligan and John Lewis, all of whom came from very different places and went very much in separate ways? Jazz is all about reaching out of your comfort zone, so putting together great musicians from different schools is always going to be worth listening to.
And in this case, although Kirk could draw on almost any musical language you cared to name, he had a solid grounding in soul jazz. You're certainly going to get things here that you would not necessarily get on any other Jack McDuff album, but you're going to get that "jazz with a beat" and that down home sound. Kirk plays the flute in addition to his big three instrumens, and also uses a siren.
Four of the numbers here are Kirk originals. Two are standards: "Makin' Whoopee," by Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn, was originally a vehicle for Eddie Cantor in a 1928 Broadway musical. "Too Late Now," by Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner, was first sung by Jane Powell in the 1951 Powell-Fred Astaire vehicle, Royal Wedding. And one that you really wouldn't expect to find on a Jack McDuff soul jazz album, "The Skater's Waltz," by 19th century French composer Charles Emile Waldteufel. I'm not sure Waldteufel would recognize what these guys do to it, but he might also be given pause if he could visit the mid-20th century and hear his "Estudiantina Waltz" sung as "My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer."
Joe Benjamin and Art Taylor round out the quartet. Taylor is a veteran of many many Prestige sessions, and if you think of him as primarily a bop era drummer, from his work with Miles, Red Garland and others, prepare to think again. He establishes himself here as a giant of funk drumming.
The album was called Kirk's Work. It was later released as Roland Kirk--Pre-Rahsaan, which in fact it was. The name Rahsaan would come later, not out of Islamic religious leanings (he was never a Muslim), but because the name came to him in a dream. Even this early in his career, though, he had already been named by an oneirological impulse.. His birth name was Ronald, but a dream told him to switch the letters around.
"Kirk's Work" and "Doin' the 68" were the first 45 RPM release from the session, followed by "Funk Underneath," split into two parts, and then "Three for Dizzy," also a two-sider.
Esmond Edwards is listed as "Supervision" rather than as producer. I'm not sure of the difference.
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