He was born Ronald Kirk -- known as Ronnie Kirk. He was blind / very low vision from birth.
He started off blowing bugle sounds on a cut-off hose at the Baptist church. They got him a trumpet but his doctor thought the pressure would aggravate his eye condition so he played sax.
The local instrument dealer loved him and fixed up some antique horns for him -- a soprano sax with an upturned bell (which he called the moon zellar, later shortened to manzello) and a straight alto (which he called a stritch). He had a dream of playing 3 horns at once, so he started trying it.
He started as an attraction for an R&B band --- “Blind Man Walking!” So he had to walk around the bar while playing sax. Finally he was playing too far out, and playing 2 horns at once was the final straw. So he went on the road.
Around the age of 18 he got to sit in with the Basie band, and they were blown away by this kid blowing two horns at once.
He ran into Charlie Parker, and Bird encouraged him to keep doing his thing.
He was in a band with two other blind musicians named Three Blind Mice.
At some point he had a dream to change his name from Ronald to Roland.
He recorded his first album in 1956 at age 21.
We Free Kings (1961) is widely considered his break-out album. “We Free Kings” shifts between “All Blues” and “We Three Kings” (the old Christmas carol).
Shortly afterwards, he began playing with Charles Mingus for about 6 months, recorded on Oh Yeah and a live Birdland recording. Unfortunately, Mingus disbanded this group to focus on writing his autobiography for a while.
Mingus reportedly was delighted by Kirk who, along with Dolphy, was in a select group of musicians that Mingus would never abuse. It’s not hard to see how Kirk and Mingus are musical soulmates: highly individual and iconoclastic, outspoken, pushing the boundaries of jazz while always honoring the tradition and history. (Sun Ra is another radical who continued to honor tradition and play songs from the past.)
On Domino (1962), Kirk played with some of the highest profile musicians of his career: Herbie Hancock, Wynton Kelly, and Roy Haynes. (Joe Termini was the owner of the Five Spot.)
He recorded a concert in Copenhagen in 1963 with NHOP and Sonny Boy Williamson (harmonica) on a couple tracks. He recorded another live concert in 1964, Gifts & Messages, with Mingus’s former piano player Horace Parlan. He also recorded a lot with Quincy Jones’s orchestra in the 60s.
On I Talk with the Spirits (1964), Kirk only plays flute. Jethro Tull would later cover Kirk’s “Serenade to a Cuckoo”, and many felt that Tull’s Ian Anderson got famous by ripping off Kirk. Anderson said he heard that one album but didn’t hear any other Kirk for many years, and he was not a huge influence.
What did I miss? What are your favorites from this era?
Other playlists:
His live album was great, with my favorite version of Jitterbug Waltz. He used to play the Main Point outside Philly, and reportedly used to snort un godly amounts of coke before going on.