One of the most unique jazz artists has to be Roland Kirk, who first made a name for himself with Charles Mingus, but later on for creating not only unique sounds from playing 2-3 instruments simultaneously, but actually creating instruments of his own (to adapt to his blindness). These eight albums find him at his most creative peak, in the 1960s.
Kirk’s first “live” recording finds him in Copenhagen in 1963, with Tete Monoliu/p, Niels-Hening Orsted Pedersen/b, Don Moore/b and JC Moses/dr with Kirk wailing on the blues “The Monkey Thing” and the band jamming hard for the concluding “On the Corner of King and Scott Streets. In 1964, Kirk plays only the flute and is richly vibrant on “Django” and exotic on “Serenade to a Cuckoo”, a tune later adapted by the rock group Jethro Tull. 1965 finds him in an inspired concert with Jaki Byard-Lonnie Liston Smith/p, Charles Crosby/dr and Major Holley/b with Kirk playing the likes of saxes, stritch, nose flute and Manzello. Kirk and Byard duet wondrously together on “I Wished On The Moon”, with the band getting down and dirty on “Roots”. The same year, he’s in the studio with Byard, Richard Davis/b and Coltrane member Elvin Jones/dr for a Middle Eastern mooded “Once In Awhile” and some clever harmonics for “No Tonic Press”. Next year, Kirk goes slightly Latin with Virgil Jones/tp, Garnett Brown/tb, Edward Mathias/b, Gerald Brown/dr and a percussion section with a focus on romance on current pops hit like “And I Love Her” by The Beatles and “Walk On By”. Kirk links up his quartet of Sonny Brown-Albert Heath/dr, Harold Mabern/p and Abdullah Rafik/tp with Benny Golson’s Orchestra for some creative juxtapositions on “Ecclusiastics” and “Variation On A Theme”. With Horace Parlan/p, Michael Fleming/b and Steve Ellington/dr, Kirk hard bops well on pieces like “Vertigo Ro” and “Hip Chops”,