Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Portrait Of Those Beautiful Ladies (1975) (recorded May 14, 1975)

Two versions of this beautiful jazz-funk jam were recorded by multi-instrumentalist Kirk for his masterpiece double LP The Case Of The 3 Sided Dream In Audio Color.

Watch full video on YouTube.

View most recent version of this post on Substack.

On May 14, 1975, multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk was in New York City recording his double album masterpiece The Case Of The 3 Sided Dream In Audio Color.

Ronald Theodore Kirk was born in Columbus, Ohio. He became blind at age two, which he later said was caused by a nurse who “put too much medicine in my eyes and my mother didn't find out about it too late.” He was inspired by a dream to transpose two letters in his first name, becoming Roland, and in 1970 added “Rahsaan” to his name after hearing it in another dream.

According to Joel Dorn, who produced all his records for Atlantic and Warner Bros., Kirk’s first instrument was a garden hose that he cut holes into to create different notes. He then learned to play the bugle and graduated to what Dorn described as a “beat-up saxophone somebody got for (him).” By the time he was a teenager, he was spending weekends touring with an R&B band. Interviewed for a 2016 All About Jazz profile on Kirk, Dorn retold a story originally told to him by legendary saxophonist Hank Crawford:

“He would be like this 14 year-old blind kid playing two horns at once. They would bring him out and he would tear the joint up. Hank saw him in Memphis or Nashville and he said he was unbelievable when he was a kid. Now they had him doing all kinds of goofy stuff but he was playing the two horns and he was playing the shit out of them. He was an original from the beginning.”

Ron Carter played bass on Kirk and Al Hibbler’s 1972 joint album A Meeting Of The Times, a rare appearance by Duke Ellington’s former ballad singer Hibbler at that stage in his career. Interviewed on the Everyone Loves Guitar podcast in 2020, Carter shared his recollections of Kirk. “He was a nice man once you got a chance to sit down with him and music was not there,” said Carter. “He had a broad view of things that somehow we kind of don't see, so to speak.”

From 1965-76, Kirk recorded a dozen albums for Atlantic Records, his longest tenure with a single label. His next-to-last release on Atlantic was The Case Of The 3 Sided Dream In Audio Color (1975), a three-sided double LP (with the fourth side seemingly blank, but containing a hidden track) that was recorded in one day during a marathon session at Regent Sound Studio in New York City. Standout cuts were the soul-jazz-funk flavored “Echoes of Primitive Ohio and Chili Dogs“ and the very funky “Freaks For The Festival.” The album also included two versions of his superb jam “Portrait Of Those Beautiful Ladies,” one with Kirk on flute, and another with him playing saxophones.

Besides tenor and bass saxes, Kirk also played flute and trumpet on the LP. The rest of the album's all-star lineup included Arthur Jenkins, Hilton Ruiz, and the great Richard Tee on keyboards; Cornell Dupree, Hugh McCracken, and Keith Loving on guitars; John Goldsmith, Sonny Brown, and Steve Gadd on drums; Ralph MacDonald on congas and percussion; Lawrence Killian on congas; Francisco Centeno, Metathias Pearson, and Bill Salter on bass, and Pat Patrick on baritone sax.

At the Montreux Jazz Festival in July, 1975, Kirk and his band laid down a stellar live version of “Portrait Of Those Beautiful Ladies.” Later that same year, he suffered a major stroke that led to the left side of his body being partially paralyzed. He modified his instruments to allow himself to play with one arm, and kept touring and recording. Kirk died from a second stroke in 1977, the morning after his final performance at Indiana University. He was only 42 years old.

Further info:

The Case Of The Three Sided Dream, documentary, 2014.

“Roland Kirk: Here Comes The Whistleman,” by Duncan Heining, All About Jazz, October 19, 2016.

“Let me tell you about Rahsaan Roland Kirk,” by Dr. Marigaux, YouTube documentary, 2018.

“Ron Carter on working with Rahsaan Roland Kirk,” Everyone Loves Guitar podcast, October 20, 2020.

#jazz #funk #RahsaanRolandKirk