"Buy everything this guy has to offer becos' you may never get to hear the likes of this again.
Kirk is an otherworldly musician - like Trane, Miles, Hendrix... He does things that leave you wondering if there are any rules left in music. Obviously not.
This album's title track takes on a freakish significance as it was created after Kirk had an acid trip in which he relived the callousness of a nurse who blinded him when he was an infant.
Yet he could see more than most."
Genius of Mr. Kirk
Brian "Jazz Fan" J. B. | Kalamazoo, MI USA | 09/24/2004
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Rahsaan was one of the great jazz players, with his own take on black classical music. This CD shows the different instruments and styles he used to make swinging, beautiful, inspiring music. If you like this, or if you like the flute, try "I Talk to the Spirits" also. All jazz fans could use some Trane, Miles, Mingus, Monk, and Rahsaan too."
Roland Kirk's Finest Hour
Earl Manley | NY | 03/17/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Roland Kirk's music is jazz by definition but in reality it is s unclassifiable: a completely original performer whose style encompasses his early New Orleans roots, through swing and bebop, to the abstraction of the 1960s and 1970s avant-garde. This CD is, in my opinion, his finest work. From the opening chords of the Black and Crazy Blues Roland takes the listener on a ride that is unmatched in virtuosity by any other performer regardless of their musical idiom. While Inflated Tear is Kirk's spiritual essay about his sightless life, it is a musical tone poem for the listener taking us to places seldom visited. It is truly a masterpiece. Highly recommended"
Complete original
mike zichella | 07/05/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I enjoy what the other reviewers have wrote about this great album.
People were distracted from Kirk's real talent (because he plays 3 horns at one time, and was blind and charasmatic). Try listening to the song "The Inflated Tear". This song encompasses the strength, delicateness, and creativity of his playing. And, I wonder how such a song could have been concieved. There is no other album like this one. I hope you try it.
Also...
I've read that this album was on Ken Keasy and the Merry Prankster's bus. Of course, the guys in the Grateful Dead must have heard it. It sounds to me that "Sage and Spirit", from the Deads 1974 album, "Blues for Allah" sounds like it might have come from an appreciation of the song "Fingers in the Wind" from "The Inflated Tear". Maybe?"
Nothing inflated about Kirk
Nikica Gilic | Zagreb, Croatia | 06/08/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This magnificent musician is one of the true treasures of American jazz;
before I actually started listening to him I was a bit suspicious about his multiinstrumentalism, but he uses his numerous (and often strange) horns and whistles as a musician - there is nothing flashy or inflated in what I heard of him so far (incidently; the title of the album refers to Kirk's medical problems connected to his blindness...).
But, if you want to know, on the cover of this fine Atlantic album they say he plays tenor sax, Manzello, stritch, clarinet, flute, whistle AND "English horn or flexafone"...
The rest of the group are Ron Burton (p), Steve Novosel (b) and Jimmy Hopps (dm), plus Dick Griffith (tb) on "Fly by Night"..."