Roland Kirk, "We Free Kings"

Recorded August 16-17, 1961, New York

Sack Full of Soul: I think they hit Peak Swing on Sack Full of Soul, the second solo manzello chorus, 5th bar. The bass stops walking for two bars, accenting the second and third beats of the first bar and the first, second, then the fourth beat of the next bar. But the bass isn't right on the beat I don't think, he's ahead or behind, or both. The whole band is swinging on all cylinders at that point. The bass gets so excited (my interpretation) that he clips the turnaround at the end of the second bar described above. "Clip" meaning he plays too loud so that the recorded signal is cut off at the higher frequencies and energies. I should put the tune in Audacity to see if the spectrograph shows visual evidence of my intuition.

The melody on Sack full of Soul encourages the hornplayer to take the instrument from his mouth between phrases. Kirk at times proves it by vocalizing, showing that his mouth is free of the horns. It reminds me of Armstrong on the youtube recorded version of Someday, when he takes his trumpet out of his mouth between phrases in the melody at the start of the tune, looking off to one side as if to let that phrase go, not let himself be bothered by whatever imperfections it might have contained.

Kirk plays tenor saxophone, flute, stritch, manzello, siren.

I've been practicing: Moon Song, A Sack Full of Soul, The Haunted Melody.

Kirk likes broad, full descending phrases outlining interesting chords and chord voicings, or simply chromatic or scale descents, or ascents. He has a large, big, sound, steeped in swing. I think he starts from swing, always. Like Armstrong. 


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Certain musical phrases persist in my playing across instruments.

Thus there is something independent (?) of the instruments that describes the phrase.

The phrase is not dependent on peculiarities of fingering across instruments.

Playing in different keys also demonstrates the trascendent effect.

Example: All of Me, introducing a higher note into the melody, and corrupting the scored triplet, at the "Why not take" lyric.