Jazz Articles about Haunted Melodies

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Haunted Melodies: Songs of Rahsaan Roland Kirk

by Jack Bowers
April 1, 1999

If this tribute album consisting of 13 compositions by the incomparable Rahsaan Roland Kirk seems to roam widely over the musical map, that’s a pretty fair description of what Kirk himself did for nearly two decades before his untimely death in December 1977 at age 41. While the listener may have admired or been repelled by Kirk’s music, he couldn’t simply slap on a label and be done with it. Kirk transcended labels as surely as he defied description. Blind ...