Roland Xp80

This three-CD box set, in producer and then label Boss' weirdly wired brain, encompasses two different sides of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Discs one and two represent sporadic live recordings of Kirk from 1962 to 1972, all of them previously unreleased and issued courtesy of a Kirk collector named George Bonafacio. These two discs contain Kirk classics such as "Domino," "Blacknuss," and an excerpt from "Three for the Festival," as well as singular Kirk interpretations of "I Say a Little Prayer," "Freddie Freeloader," "Lester Leaps In," "Giant Steps," "Sister Sadie," and more. These two discs are chock-full of stellar performances that are well-recorded despite being fan tapes. The musicians on these dates range from bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pederson to Hilton Ruiz, Jerome Cooper, Tete Montoliu, and many others…

This is one of the maddest Roland Kirk albums of all time - and it's also one of the hardest to find! The title says "Slightly Latin", but it's more of a mixed-up Now Sound/Bacharach-ish blend of orchestrations and voices, plus Exotica tinges, with Roland playing some very off-kilter reed solos on flute and various saxes. The sound is incredible, and the arrangements are incredibly strange - and the album sounds like nothing that Kirk (or anyone else) has ever done. Highlights include "Shaky Money", "Safari", "Ebrauos", "Raouf", "Juarez", and a wild version of "Walk On By". The whole thing's wild, though, and it never lets up for a minute! More "out" than "easy", and a real treasure that's the kind of reissue we like to get behind!

It's hard to fathom today, but Roland Kirk was considered a gimmick for much of his early career. For sure, the man was a cagey character, which certainly didn't help his reputation. People were bemused by the way he played multiple horns simultaneously, including some horns that he invented himself. His style wasn't easy to pin down, either, so fluent was he in every jazz idiom.