Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Genres:	Jazz • Music Videos & Concerts • R&B / Soul
Descriptive "tags":	jazz • saxophone • avant-garde • avant-garde jazz • experimental
Decades Active:	1950s • 1960s • 1970s • 1980s • 1990s • 2000s
Artist Compilations:	Rahsaan Roland Kirk & Al Hibbler
Links online:	BBC Music • Wikipedia

Biography

7 August 1936, Columbus, Ohio, USA, d. 5 December 1977, Bloomington, Indiana, USA. Originally named ‘Ronald’, Kirk changed it to ‘Roland’ and added ‘Rahsaan’ after a dream visitation by spirits who ‘told him to’. Blinded soon after his birth, Kirk became one of the most prodigious multi-instrumentalists to work in jazz, with a career that spanned R&B, bop and the ‘New Thing’ jazz style. According to Joe Goldberg’s sleeve notes for Kirk’s Work (1961), Kirk took up trumpet at the age of nine after hearing the bugle boy at a summer camp where his parents acted as counsellors. He played trumpet in the school band, but a doctor advised against the strain trumpet playing imposes on the eyes. At the Ohio State School for the Blind, he took up saxophone and clarinet from 1948. By 1951 he was well known as a player and was leading his own dance band in the locality. Kirk’s ability to play three instruments...

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