Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Dog Years in the Fourth Ring (1997) [3CD Box Set]

This three-CD box set, in producer and then label Boss' weirdly wired brain, encompasses two different sides of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Discs one and two represent sporadic live recordings of Kirk from 1962 to 1972, all of them previously unreleased and issued courtesy of a Kirk collector named George Bonafacio. These two discs contain Kirk classics such as "Domino," "Blacknuss," and an excerpt from "Three for the Festival," as well as singular Kirk interpretations of "I Say a Little Prayer," "Freddie Freeloader," "Lester Leaps In," "Giant Steps," "Sister Sadie," and more. These two discs are chock-full of stellar performances that are well-recorded despite being fan tapes. The musicians on these dates range from bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pederson to Hilton Ruiz, Jerome Cooper, Tete Montoliu, and many others. None of this material is substandard. Kirk wastes no time on the opener, "Domino," in breaking out the whistles in his solo. The blues range is deep on many of these tracks, as is the entertainment value. Kirk was a performer as much as he was a musician, before and after the stroke. His lyric and harmonic sensibilities were deeply embedded in one another, and his way of crossing harmonic strategies was truly singular because it was so unorthodox (check his gorgeous opening and full read of "I Remember Clifford" or the excerpt from his medley of "Blue Monk" and "Misterioso" for examples). The fact that he could play two melodies at once was only one of his many skills. In any case, anyone looking for live Kirk apart from the Montreaux recordings would be well-advised to seek these out. Disc three is a CD issue of Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata, his worst-selling and most critically dumped-on studio record. Released in 1971, it featured Kirk on all instruments. Natural Black Inventions is one of the heaviest records Kirk ever released, a completely focused meditation on mode, rhythm, drone, and the blues' context within them. Here was an honest, non-abstract attempt to put Eastern music up against the blues and see what happened. Using everything from his saxophones and flutes to his strich, manzello, harmonium, drums, and bird-and-duck calls years before John Zorn knew they existed as musical instruments, Kirk took his black experience and rooted it in the experience of the day, as well as in antiquity and in the history of jazz, soul, R&B, the blues, and even Yiddish music (check out "Island Cry" for a solid example, where the barroom meets the Jewish exodus to the slave call-and-response hollers in the fields). And the fact that it goes on and on for 45 minutes is so breathtaking that it becomes heartbreaking. Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata is its own classic, and it deserved its own release apart from the package, but listeners will have to take what they can get. For this album alone, this package is worth the price.


Tracks:

CD 1 (Dog Years in the Fourth Ring):
01. Box Tops and Whistlin' Rings
02. Domino
03. Blues for Alice
04. I Remember Clifford
05. Freddie Freeloader
06. Lester Leaps In
07. Sister Sadie
08. One Mind/Seasons
09. I Say a Little Prayer


CD 2 (Dog Years in the Fourth Ring):
01. Jammin' with a Wolf
02. Three for the Festival (excerpt)
03. Untitled Blues
04. Passion Dance
05. Petite Fleur (Little Flower)
06. Giant Steps
07. Misterioso/Blue Monk (excerpt)
08. Rahsaantalk
09. Multi-Horn Medley: Satin Doll/Lover
10. Blacknuss


CD 3 (Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata):
01. Something for Trane That Trane Could Have Said
02. Island Cry
03. Runnin' from the Trash
04. Day Dream
05. The Ragman and the Junkman They Ran from the Businessman They Laughed and He Cried
06. Breath-A-Thon
07. Rahsaanica
08. Raped Voices
09. Haunted Feelings
10. Prelude Back Home
11. Dance of the Lobes
12. Harder & Harder Spiritual
13. Black Root