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Our audio excerpt starts from the beginning of the track. My Delight is an apt title for this sweet medium up swing. Like much of Rahsaan Roland Kirk's music, this composition has a simple, satisfying melody. The B section features a contrasting Latin groove and longer held notes as compared to the bebop-influenced lines of the A section.
The double notes Rahsaan plays are in all lead sheet editions, so it can be played as a quintet arrangement as well. There is a separate solo section, which Rahsaan starts with a four-measure shout in both A sections. He only plays it to start his solo chorus, but it could be used elsewhere.
This was recorded on the first session day for the "We Free Kings" album. Rahsaan was a man of many styles as you can see by comparing My Delight with The Haunted Melody which was also recorded on the first session day, and his energetic three-horn classic Three For The Festival, recorded on the second day.
Drummer Charli Persip, who was on this session, talks about some of the musicians he's played with on our YouTube channel. Also check out pianist/composer Richard Wyands on jazzleadsheets.com.
With a stritch dangling below his knees, manzello and tenor sax hanging from his neck and a hodgepodge of various homemade instruments, Roland Kirk was a surreal, innovative and inspiring saxophonist who was intensely serious about music. Born in Columbus, Ohio, he became blind at an early age. Taking up an assortment of instruments early on, he began playing tenor sax professionally in R&B bands by the age of 15. Infatuated by the manzello (saxello soprano) and stritch (straight alto saxophone), he reshaped the saxes so he could play all three simultaneously, evident in his first recording in 1956, "Triple Threat." By 1960 he had incorporated the siren whistle into his solos, and by 1963 had mastered circular breathing. Even while playing two or three saxophones at once, Kirk's music was powerful jazz with a strong feel for the blues. Read more...
