There’s a great segment when Kirk was invited to perform on America’s longest-running variety show, The Ed Sullivan Show. The idea of playing multiple horns at once came to him in a dream, and as his wife, Dorthann Kirk says, “His religion was the religion of dreams. Kirk was seen by many as a gimmicky sideshow freak, but friends and fellow musicians say those who said that were not really hearing what Kirk was doing, or as one says, “He knew the power of sound, the physics of sound….sound was his life.” His story is told in the 2014 documentary The Case of the Three-Sided Dream. He died after a second stroke in 1977 at the age of 41. I thought that was hilarious, and it endeared Kirk to me even more. Kirk said when he died, he wanted to be cremated and then he wanted his friends to put his ashes in a hash pike and smoke him. I recall seeing him interviewed post-stroke, and somehow he and the interviewer got on the topic of death.
Rahsaan roland kirk wife how to#
I became a fan and buried in a box somewhere are a couple of jazz magazines with Kirk cover stories, including one done after he suffered a stroke in 1975 that paralyzed his right side, but he relearned how to play with one working arm. Make them work, Make them work, Roland Kirk yea.”Īnd that was all I knew about Rahsaan Roland Kirk until two years later when Kirk and his band, the Vibration Society, appeared on an hour-long PBS show, and I witnessed the phenomenon of this seemingly joyous blind musician playing multiple horns at the same time. First time I heard of him was when Eric Burdon sang about him on the fabulous 1970 album Eric Burdon Declares War, which opens with the Burdon-penned two-part song called “The Vision of Rassan (sic)”: I have to start with one of my favorite jazz cats – the one-man reed Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Whatever musical genre you care to explore, you’ll find some great documentaries available for streaming, however, I thought I’d kick off this new column by looking at a few of the great jazz documentaries you can stream.
Rahsaan roland kirk wife series#
Yes, I do series binging when I find a weird and wonderful series, and they are out there, but sometimes it takes deep diving to find the gems among the dreck, and there are mountains of dreck available. Being a devoted streamer, I’m not just sitting around waiting for Part 3 of Making of a Murderer or the next Tiger King. And I thank my lucky stars every day.I’ve forgotten the exact year it happened, sometime earlier in this century I cut the cable and have been a dedicated streamer ever since. If I hadn't taken that jazz appreciation class in college, if I'd skipped class that day, if I'd never heard him: I can't imagine.Īs Joel Dorn once said to me on the phone, "Do you have any idea how rare it is that somebody like him got to somebody like you?" I do. And even though I've been working on this book for like a hundred years now, I'm still amazed by the crazy luck, or whatever you want to call it, that brought me to Rahsaan. Of course I was blushing in the audience-still star-struck over meeting Dorthaan all those years ago. So the universe told me that May was a special person." 5th-not the same year, but that's the anniversary of Rahsaan's death. She told the story of when we first met: "May was chasing everybody in New York, from Elvin Jones's wife, and I would run into people and they'd be like, 'This May lady from Austin is looking for you.' And I'm like, 'Well, I'm NOT hard to find, I work at WBGO!" Anyhow, when I finally met her, I was realized, 'Oh my god, she's just a kid in college!!!' And for those of you who believe in the universe, May and I were meant to meet. This was taken shortly before Dorthaan got up to speak. (L-R is Dorthaan, Betty Neals, and my mom, Liz). This isn't the clearest picture but this is at the 75th b-day tribute I threw for Rahsaan at the Elephant Room in Austin this past August.