Rahsaan Roland Kirk

• 180 GRAM ANALOGUE VINYL

• LIMITED EDITION

• AUDIOPHILE RE-MASTERING BY RAY STAFF AT AIR MASTERING

From its opening bars, with Bill Salter's bass and Rahsaan's flute passionately playing Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine," you know this isn't an ordinary Kirk album (were any of them?). As the string section, electric piano, percussion, and Cornel Dupree's guitar slip in the back door, one can feel the deep soul groove Kirk is bringing to the jazz fore here. He took the pop out of pop and made it Great Black Music. He took the jazz world down a peg to make it feel its roots in the people's music, and consequently made great jazz from pop tunes in the same way his forbears did with Broadway show tunes. While the entire album shines like a big black sun, the other standouts include a deeply moving read of "My Girl" and a version of "The Old Rugged Cross" that takes it back forever from those white fundamentalists who took all the blood and sweat from its grain and replaced them with cheap tin and collection plates. On Kirk's version, grace doesn't come cheap, though you can certainly be a poor person to receive it. Ladies and gents, Blacknuss is as deep as a soul record can be and as hot as a jazz record has any right to call itself. A work of sheer blacknuss!

PERSONNEL:

• RAHSAAN ROLAND KIRK , Flute, Guitar, Gong, Tenor Sax, Vocals, Whistle, Stritch, Manzello
• PRINCESS PATIENCE BURTON , Vocals
• BILLY BUTLER , Guitar
• CORNELL DUPREE , Guitar
• DICK GRIFFIN , Trombone
• CISSY HOUSTON , Vocals
• ARTHUR JENKINS , Conga, Cabassa
• RICHARD LANDRUM , Conga
• KEITH LOVING , Guitar
• CHARLES MCGHEE , Trumpet
• KHALIL MHRDI , Drums
• HENRY PEARSON , Bass
• BERNARD "PRETTY" PURDIE , Drums
• BILL SALTER , Bass
• SONELIUS SMITH , Piano
• RICHARD TEE , Piano
• JOSEPH "HABAO" TEXIDOR , Percussion
• MICKEY TUCKER , Organ

Recorded at Atlantic Recording Studios, New York, N.Y. August, 31, 1971 and Regent Sound Studios, New York, N.Y. September, 8, 1971

TRACKS:

• SIDE A:
• A1. Ain't No Sunshine
• A2. What's Goin' On/Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)
• A3. Take Me Girl, I'm Ready
• A4. I Love You Yes I Do
• A5. My Girl
• A6. Which Way Is It Going
• A7. One Nation

• SIDE B:
• B1. Never Can Say Goodbye
• B2. Old Rugged Cross
• B3. Make It With You
• B4. Blacknuss