Henry Pearson

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Rahsaan Roland Kirk: Compliments of the Mysterious Phantom

by C. Michael Bailey
May 2, 2003

If Sun Ra was jazz music's Timothy Leary, then Rahsaan Roland Kirk was its Elijah.Kirk, jazz music's most iconoclastic character, was also one of its most gifted. Once dismissed as a circus sideshow, he has seen his popularity, as well as his influence, steadily increase over the past twenty years. Kirk has been called many things'shaman, sage, charlatan, sideshow barker. But Rahsaan Roland Kirk represents the free spirit of jazz. He was a fearless improviser who invented his ...