Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Domino
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Meeting On Termini’s Corner
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – A Stritch In Time
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – 3 In 1 Without The Oil
I may have missed our Anniversary by a day, but never ever will I forget to pay tribute to our patron saint on his birthday, today August 7th, Rahsaan Roland Kirk. This year’s selection is his debut for Mercury records, where he would record for most of the 1960s, Domino. At this time, Rahsaan must have been flying pretty high. He’d just been in Charles Mingus group, immortalized on the album Oh Yeah (and later on the album of outtakes from that session, Tonight At Noon), and while he had been seen as almost a sideshow artist previously, his skill and his talent was winning more and more converts.
It’s fascinating listening to Domino, and realizing that it’s actually the album that premieres some of Rahsaan’s hallmarks during this early period. We Free Kings, released later that same year, might have truly been his breakout, especially with it’s iconic, “Three For The Festival,” but listening to the selection of tracks here, particularly “3 in 1 Without The Oil,” you see that Rahsaan was already on a different level right from the start. When you think about later iconic songs, like “Serenade To A Cuckoo,” again, you hear so much of what Rahsaan would be working on then, here right at the start. It’s a lovely, largely brisk album, as Rahsaan, on flute, tenor, manzello & stritch, is accompanied by Andrew Hill on the first six tracks, including all of the ones I’m sharing, and then backed by Wynton Kelly and Roy Haynes on the final four tracks of the album. Bassist Vernon Martin does stalwart work throughout, as of course also does Rahsaan.
I know this copy I currently have of Domino, which I’m fairly sure I bought during a birthday week jaunt to Groove Merchant years ago, isn’t as minty in terms of sound quality as we all might like, but at the same time, none of those minor issues with the vinyl can take away from the brilliance of these performances…Bright Moments!