Rahsaan Roland Kirk: Seek & Listen: Live At The Penthouse

Most jazz fans are likely familiar with the visual images that are usually tagged onto the music of Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935 -1977)—photos of a man in black sunglasses with three (or more) reed instruments around his neck and/or in his mouth. That these optics often precede the experience of the music is ironic, since Kirk himself was blind. But Kirk was a showman. These images caught the attention. And he did indeed play three (maybe only two; maybe the third was up there just for show) instruments at a time—not throughout a tune, but when the mood struck him, or the music called for it. A bit quirky? Maybe.

In a 20-year recording career, Kirk released 30 albums, give or take—it is often hard to track smaller label album releases; some slip through the cracks of the discographers. He favored small ensembles to present his work—quartets and quintets. When a musician plays an arsenal of different horns—tenor sax, clarinet, flute, nose flute, stritch and more, some of his own invention, allowing him to keep the sideman line-ups to a minimum.

Seek and Listen is a double CD/LP from mid-career Kirk. Recorded in 1967 at the Penthouse club, it presents Kirk and his rhythm section tearing through a Kirk-ian repertoire of hard bop romps, pop tunes (Ode to Billie Joe, Alfie) and bracing soul jazz spiced with his tent show exhortations, political rantings and oddball banter, much in the manner of Charles Mingus. He must have been having the time of his life.

The sound is loose and rough around the edges, as if the band had ridden into town on an old wobbly-wheeled bus, set up shop on the available stage and let it trip. Afterward, the snake oil was available from a bus window.

Seeks & Listens: Live At the Penthouse is another of the ongoing Resonance Records releases coming from the blood, sweat and tears work of producer Zev Feldman, a man who seems obsessed with discovering and releasing every worthy, undiscovered jazz recording in existence.

For those who fear the potential distractions of "tent show exhortations, political rantings and oddball banter," worry not; they are held to a minimum, are low in the mix and act as more of a subtle enhancement of live-show energy vibe.