Customer Reviews

Volunteered Slavery

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Once again Collectables have messed up another re-issue. The second side of Roland Kirk's Volunteered Slavery (tracks 6-10) is recorded live without pauses. On the Collectables version there are annoying 1-2 second gaps between each track. This makes the disk very hard to listen to.

Buy the original Rhino/Atlantic re-issue. There are no gaps between tracks.

[DW]

Rahsaan Roland Kirk was not born blind; his blindness was caused by the ineptitude of a nurse who, either high or simply careless, overdosed him with too many eye drops. He said once that his entire life was an inflated tear. Kirk combined rage with sensitivity, curiosity with an almost maniacal need to push life to its breaking point.

The entire range of Rahsaan's emotional architecture can be heard and felt in this absolutely extraordinary CD; were you to own only one Kirk CD, this should probably be it. The original LP was split, side one offered five studio tracks, including two covers of schmaltzy top 40 fare, a favorite Kirk habit. Side two featured a live performance at the 1968 Newport Jazz Festival - as blistering a piece of live jazz as has ever been recorded by anyone.

The CD begins with Volunteered Slavery, an infectious tidbit with some very interesting lyrics. Kirk was a relentless iconoclast, and the concept of volunteered slavery is a provocative one - for black and white alike. Spirits Up Above, with choir, is an invocation, an anthem. Kirk breaks out the flute for My Cherie Amour, as is always the case when he covers a standard, he retains the original beauty while adding on layers of irony, edge, and originality. Search For The Reason Why, also with choir, is Kirk at his catchiest and most sincere - this is music you might sing in the shower. The cover of I Say A Little Prayer would probably give Burt Bacharach a heart attack. Long time Kirk collaborator Ron Burton deserves special credit here, his piano playing is particularly strong. Kirk slips into one-man orchestra mode, playing multiple horns simultaneously. This track builds steadily from one plateau to the next until it achieves a state of euphoria, something resembling religious ecstasy.

At this point you switch over to the Newport concert and - school is out, way out. Kirk is in total control, he owns the crowd. From his outrageous comments, to his mind-boggling multi-instrumentalism, to the almost hysterical energy level, he simply overpowers and awes the audience. Every second counts, but the standout here is his eight minute tribute to John Coltrane. In eight minutes Kirk shows that he understands Coltrane as well as anyone ever has, deeply honors and respects him, and is brilliant enough to actually interpret him without losing what made Coltrane unique.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk is impossible to categorize, which is one of the reasons he does not get the credit he so richly deserves. His exuberance and joy is not tidy, in Roland Kirk you have the splendid messiness of real life.

Unbelievable! This cd mixes so many genres and moods, but the most important word here is energy. It's crazy and just pounds on your brain, but in a positvie way. You know from the very start that this is going to be great, when Roland shouts "If you wanna know how it is to be free, if you wanna know how it is to be free, you gotta spend all night in bed with me, oh yeah"... No return from there. This is one of the very very few records that makes me really happy, and still rates among the very best albums ever, all genres included. Put on the record, turn up the volume, jump up and down, and let your brain get blown out by a record that celebrates not just music, but life.

If you adopt the narrow view of 1960s jazz being hard bop vs. free jazz, Rolland Kirk just didn't care.

We all know that hard bop vs. free jazz is narrow nonsense, but is instructive when looking at Kirk. Like Mingus and few others, Kirk seems to have carved his own jazz planet and did whatever the hell he wanted. This was a guy who would wear his whole arsenal around his neck, mix his flute with insane little vocal blips. Far removed from the serious stances of either Art Blakey or John Coltrane.

Not that Kirk was not serious. When Quincy Jones needed a flute player, Kirk was his man. Kirk loved pop, or to adapt it to jazz, but make no mistake--his speed and skill are incredible.

So is Kirk's out-of-left-field treatment of his chosen material: On Volunteered Slavery he does Stevie Wonder's "My Cherrie Amore," and Burt Bacharach/Hal David's "I Say A Little Prayer." Turn on any AM radio in 1969 and you would probably here these tracks on the hour.

The charm is that Kirk's reworking of these songs really is not THAT radical. He retains the structures, even the pop sense. But that flute playing, that scatting, those whimsical noises he throws in let you IMMEDIATELY know it is Kirk. No one else does stuff like this. This genius. This gadfly. This wonderful loon.

There are more jazz geared tracks: check the long "Medley For John Coltrane," and this also sounds uniquely Kirk--and not all that different from the pop tracks. Kirk stretches more here. Again, amazing.

It is a good thing Kirk was not a thief. What big fingerprints.

ANY TIME I LISTEN TO A RAHSAAN RECORD THAT WAS RECORDED IN THE MID TO LATE 1970'S IT ALWAYS BRINGS A SMILE TO MY FACE. HE WAS AT THE PEAK OF HIS BRILLIANCE AND ARTISTIC VISION. HIS MUSIC COMBINES SO MANY DIFFERENT, VARIED GENRES OF STYLES, AND HE PULLS IT OFF SO WELL. I SAW HIM PERFORM QUITE A FEW TIMES AND HE ALWAYS PUT ON A GREAT SHOW. THIS IS A LIVE ALBUM SO IT CAPTURES SOME OF THE URGENCY AND MASTERY OF THE PERFORMANCE OF HIS MATERIAL. THERE HAVE ALWYS BEEN A LOT OF DETRACTORS OF HIS MUSIC, SAYING THAT HE WAS "GIMMICK" BECUASE HE PLAYED MULTIPLE INSTRUMENTS SIMULTANEOUSLY, BUT WHAT THE NAYSAYERS FAIL TO GRASP WAS THAT THIS MAN WAS AN ORIGINAL, TRULY UNIQUE, IMPOSSIBLE TO DUPICATE. TIME HAS PROVEN THAT THEY WERE WRONG, HIS MUSIC HOLDS UP EVEN TODAY, AND I AM GLAD I HAVE THIS MAN'S MUSIC TO LISTEN TO, IT ENRICHES MY LIFE...........AND IT MAKES ME SMILE! MY FAVORITE CUT IS THE BURT BACHARACH SONG "I SAY A LITTLE PRAYER", IT'S KILLER!

Thought this as a DVD, but it is a CD which is rather in the vein of strange jazz, acid type jazz. You will have to like his style, nothing smooth here, rather spacelike, strange percussion, broken melodies.