A
FIRESIDE CHAT WITH JOHN KRUTH, AUTHOR OF BRIGHT MOMENTS
Finally, someone took the time and a publisher put down the cash for a
book on Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Now if I can just get Joel Dorn and those
good folks at 32 Jazz to keep their word to me and release a Rahsaan box
set (which they better give me a shout out on the liners of the CDs or
an on-the-box credit or something because I have been lobbying for the
damn thing since I can remember), I can die a happy man. And since I am
terribly miserable on most days, they can throw me a bone. One half of
the mission was fulfilled when brave John Kruth authored Bright Moments,
based on the life and times of improvised music's folk hero. Good for
you. First born son is John for sure. Well, here he is, unedited and in
his own words. And don't be so cheap, click on over to BarnesandNoble.com
or Amazon.com or Buyadamnbookandimpressyourfriends.com
and buy the book. It is a good read.
FRED JUNG: Did you ever meet Rahsaan?
JOHN KRUTH: I never met Rahsaan. I never met Rahsaan and I never saw him.
As Joel Dorn put it, his producer, it took a guy that never saw a blind
guy to write a book about him.
FJ: What prompted you to write a biography on Rahsaan?
JOHN KRUTH: I've been a multi-instrumentalist since I was a teenager.
Along with Bob Dylan and the Beatles and Rolling Stones, the guys that
were obviously the biggest influence on my generation, Rahsaan Roland
Kirk was perhaps the biggest influence on me as a musician. I've had six
albums out myself and I'm a multi-instrumentalist. He was the guy that
opened that door and said that you don't have to just stay and play the
guitar. You can play whatever you want to play and evoke whatever you
need out of any instrument that you need. I loved his inventiveness and
his creativity.
FJ: Why is Rahsaan different from Sonny Rollins or Charlie Parker? What
made him so special?
JOHN KRUTH: I think that first of all, Rahsaan, being the multi-instrumentalist
and being sightless, he just had a way of incorporating everything that
he heard into his music. Whether it was a jackhammer on the street, if
he liked the rhythm of that, somehow it would make it into his music.
Sirens, he actually used sirens. So I would say he drew from all sorts
of pure sounds more than just the history of jazz or as he called it black
classical music. He drew from everything that he heard, whether it was
Chinese music or he loved a lot of classical music as well. He did renditions
of classical pieces himself, so whether he was drawing from classical
music or whatever it was, he used the whole world as his influence, as
much as a guy like Charlie Parker and a guy like Sonny Rollins was really
working the history of jazz through the mold. One of the reasons that
he had so much criticism was that he really wasn't truly a jazz musician.
He was really much more open than that.
FJ: At what age did Rahsaan loose his sight?
JOHN KRUTH: At two, he was born partially sighted. No one really knows
the full story. I did a lot of research and I could never really get the
full story on it, but he was born partially sighted. He went for a series
of therapy and eyewashes and there was an incident in which a nurse used
too much of whatever they were washing his eyes with, which caused the
muscle to tear away from his eye completely. From the age of two, he was
enveloped in darkness.
FJ: How did he manage?
JOHN KRUTH: Beautifully as far as I understand. All the stories about
Rahsaan's sightlessness, as he preferred to call it, being sightless.
Blind is really when you are ignorant. The stories are the most outrageous.
He led other people. People would say that when he was looking for a joint,
he would tell you exactly what was going on, on the street. He'd tell
you that it was two blocks down and it's next to this place. He knew his
way around beautifully. Guys would say that he would walk into an office
and feel his way right to the telephone and get on the telephone and make
calls. He never had a seeing-eye dog and he didn't rely on other people
to get him around. He really was a very brave and had a deep sense of
concentration. One of the things is his highly developed ability to concentrate.
He could identify people by their footsteps, by their walk. He could hear
across the room. There are stories where he is in the middle of a solo
and he hears somebody talking at the Village Vanguard. He was quick to
bust people for their ignorance. One of the things that he was always
dealing with, every single day of his life, was people's ignorance about
the blind or sightless.
FJ: Rahsaan had a very strong personality, not taking a backseat to anyone.
JOHN KRUTH: Very, in fact, he was known for chasing some people off the
stage here and there. As far as jazz lore goes and the history of jazz,
he kind of had that gunfighter thing going on. He liked a good challenge.
If you hear the Mingus album, he really shredded George Adams, who was
no slouch, a fine saxophonist. He was a very powerful man, who had a good
strong sense of when people were right and liked to set them straight
when they weren't. He sometimes threw punches when he didn't need to,
but he also made people nervous because he had such a fantastic presence.
FJ: You mention in the book that Rahsaan was mistakenly arrested for hijacking
a plane?
JOHN KRUTH: Well, we have a problem with race in this country. That was
probably a great example, unfortunately. That was like about 1971, I think,
early '70s. Rahsaan was a great kidder. He had a fantastic sense of humor.
He was really a character. Wherever he went it was a moveable feast. You've
got a lot of owl-faced clerks in this world. People that just can't handle
anybody else having such a free spirit. It's in the book, but they arrested
him and they held him for three days in a jail and held paper in front
of him and told him to read it. They didn't believe that he was blind
because of the way that he acted and the way that he carried himself.
A lot of people didn't believe that Rahsaan was blind. "Rahsaan told me
what color shirt I was wearing." I think that that was a very sad incident
in which he was jailed for three days. Black power was really in the forefront
and Rahsaan was outspoken. He was outrageous and outspoken and he scared
a lot of people. God knows jazz could use another guy like that.
FJ: Amen. You spent three years writing the book.
JOHN KRUTH: About three years, yeah.
FJ: In the three years you researched the life of Rahsaan, what is the
most prominent aspect of his life that made a significant impression on
you?
JOHN KRUTH: I learned about his intuitiveness from Rahsaan unlike any
person that I've ever met. Rahsaan wasn't this guy that everybody put
on a pedestal as some kind of magical, mystical guy. He just worked harder
than anybody else can probably imagine. That's why there was a lot of
jealousy there. He didn't have this magical thing where he could play
two or three horns at once. He sat down and he figured it out. He would
hold notes for fifteen minutes with his circular breathing. Now how did
a guy get to that? He worked. He mortgaged his life for it. I would say
that that is what I did for the last three years. I mortgaged my life.
Pretty much, not to say that I stopped playing music completely because
first of all, Rahsaan wouldn't want me to stop playing music. No musician
would want another musician to stop gigging. I devoted myself to something
that I believed in and I was shocked that nobody else had done it. I have
never written a musical biography before. I'm a musician.
FJ: I asked Joel this and I will ask you the same, do you feel vindicated
that those whom vilified Rahsaan when he was alive now can't say enough
about him and that the bandwagon is running at full capacity?
JOHN KRUTH: I think that people are ready to receive the information now.
There is a lot of reasons for that. First of all, Rahsaan is not here
to scare the hell out of them anymore. Rahsaan really frightened people.
He was just an incredible ball of fire. I am not a jazz musician, but
I've always thrown in a couple of his tunes here and there. I always take
time at my gigs to talk about Don Cherry, Yusef Lateef, and Rahsaan Roland
Kirk. Those are the guys that I really feel are very important for people
to know about and I'm always shocked that people don't know about him.
I'm happy that I can put the word out.
FJ: What is the legacy of Rahsaan Roland Kirk?
JOHN KRUTH: His legacy more than anything is telling you that it doesn't
matter what you do. It doesn't matter if you are a plumber. Get out and
fix that sink with spirit and soul. It doesn't matter if you are a poet
or a short order cook. Cook it with love. Cook it with soul. I really
believe that even though Rahsaan took issue with people's ignorance and
was always trying to set people straight, that guy was an incredible spirit.
He had fantastic commitment to music and that's what I got out of it.
Fred Jung is Editor-In-Chief. Comments? Email
him.