Kirk's Work / Roland Kirk

Second record in the pile next to the turntable: Kirk's Work. This is from 1961, before Roland Kirk added Rahsaan to his name. On this album he's playing tenor sax, manzello, strich, flute, and siren. For some reason this reminds me that there is a music school for the blind (Kirk was blind) in Mexico City, in the Centro Histórico. Because of this there are good street musicians in the neighborhood. Also in Bangkok, blind people walk slowly around town singing to recorded music. Someone guides them along. They are amazingly good singers, but Thais in general seem to be above-average singers. So if you spot those musicians in DF or a singer shuffling along the walkway to the Sky train, give them some change!

But I digress far from the record at hand. Right now Funk Underneath is playing, and according to the liner notes by Joe Goldberg, Kirk uses only flute on this song, but combines this with his own voice in a technique that he says is "not really humming, but from down in my throat" to make a sort of one-man duet. He was famous for playing multiple instruments at once. Kirk's Work, with Jack McDuff on the Hammond, is Kirk's third record of thirty released during his career. Kirk's Work the song starts side B and is one of the catchiest on the album.