A relatively-unencumbered Roland Kirk was the center of activity at this recording session, spread over two afternoons in September of 1964 at Nola's Penthouse Studio on New York's 57th Street.
Roland had decided, for the first time, to do an all-flute LP--so that the unique spectacle of Kirk at stage-center with a wall of various reed instruments reaching from his chin to his ankles was not to be seen. The big horns were all missing--the tenor, manzello, and stritch. Nor were the tiniest of Kirk's horns to be heard, the whistle-siren and the nose-flute.
Instead, Roland had brought only three flutes: the C-flute, the "concert" flute and the most common of the slender pipes; the deeper-voiced alto flute, used only on the ballad medley; and a North African wooden flute, whose breathily exotic voice found its way into one of Kirk's originals, Serenade to a Cuckoo.
As the music on this LP will attest, the decision to confine his "sound" to the flute family proved to be no limitation at all for Roland. He achieved a range of color and sonority with these three reedless "reeds" that would do credit to a classical woodwind quintet--plus some wails, barks, percussive and vocal effects with the conventional C-flute that are unheard-of in the formally-trained flutist's vocabulary.
This was a "tight" and unified group, with two members of the rhythm section, pianist Horace Parlan and bassist Michael Fleming, being mainstays of Kirk's current quartet. Parlan accompanied Roland on his tour of Japan during the summer of 1964, and Fleming joined them for the quartet's club and television appearances in California on their return to the U.S.
The drummer here, Walter Perkins, is an accomplished and versatile jazz percussionist, noted for his recent work with the Art Farmer Quartet. He has also worked with Roland several times in the past.
The regular quartet instrumentation was augmented at the first of the two recording sessions by the voice of C. J. Albert, a singer who prefers initials to her given name and whose vocalese was used to supplement Kirk's flute on the first two originals, as well as the vibraphone of Bob Moses, which provided instrumental color for the theme of Roland's I Talk With The Spirits and in the duet with Kirk, Fugin' and Alludin'.
| Opening Notes |
The Musician |
The Music |
The Selections |
Tune List |