I try to avoid using the term ‘greatest’ of any individual jazz performer. Occasionally I’ll forget in my enthusiasm for one particular player, but as a rule I prefer to think in terms of many greats rather than the single greatest. Lists appear everywhere claiming to identify the “100 Greatest” this or that, but in reality the heading is merely a felony against the conventions of English grammar.
In jazz, nobody is the greatest.
To illustrate my point, consider what goes into making someone great, and let’s use an alto sax player as an example. Many varied factors combine to allow the player to produce the sound he or she does: the quality of build of the specific instrument and the artificer’s skill; the player’s embouchure and cavity of the mouth; type of reed and mouthpiece; choice of style; originality and creativeness of improvisation; robustness of performance; fingering technique; determination, practice and inspiration. No doubt I’ve omitted a few, but the sound that comes out of the horn is a meld of all these different influences. Rarely do two players sound exactly the same, despite my frequent failure to name a soloist correctly.
Now consider three saxophonists: Paul Desmond, Ornette Coleman and Cannonball Adderley. Each is (or was) a distinctive player, immediately identifiable. All were massively successful jazzmen. Each produced a vast personal catalogue of brilliant music enthralling the world for years. All three were technical masters of their instruments. Each played his own idiom of jazz. So how can we select out of this diversity which one could truly be awarded the title of “The Greatest”? We’re comparing brie with claret with whisky.
I have my favourites, of course. But that doesn’t mean they are greats, yet alone be nominees for the accolade of greatest. My preferences are purely subjective, as are yours. The most technically proficient player of all time might well bore me rigid because I don’t enjoy the creativity coming out of the instrument. Often I can’t define what it is that draws me to a particular player. So to attempt to pin the red rosette for best of breed on one specific person is fatuous.
And yet, if I was locked in a dungeon and denied freedom until I nominated a definitive candidate for investiture of the title ‘The Greatest’ I’d probably have to nominate Rahsaan Roland Kirk. His contribution to the history of our music arguably left a tad fainter mark than many others but, when considering the material characteristics of this Hector of jazz, his greatness is possibly just a little more effulgent than that of all others.
For a start he was self-taught but as a teenager he was performing with a band and at the tender age of 25 he stood artistically proud alongside Mingus. He originated his own musical instruments and adapted the keys so he could play three at once. Whistles and sirens became part of his palette. He perfected a system of circular breathing (in the nose and out the mouth) so he had the dubious ability to sustain a note almost indefinitely. I read somewhere that he could even play two melodies at once, but I’ve never heard that in practice. Even after he suffered a stroke and became virtually paralysed in one side, he still continued to perform. He wrote wonderful compositions. His range of styles started at be-bop and never finished, yet incorporated New Orleans, blues, mainstream, modern and funk. When he played the flute, he would sometimes sing along simultaneously, guttering and humming growlingly. He had superb mastery over all his chosen instruments. The creativity and originality of the man seemed to be unbounded.
And he was blind, almost from birth.
Kirk had his critics. Purists would look down their noses at his strange assortment of instruments and dismiss his work as gimmick. As jazz went through anxious and melodramatic metamorphosis in the 60s, leaving many of us perplexed and confused by what we heard, Kirk drove his chariot furiously in the vanguard of the hedonistic charge towards exploration and chaos. Sometimes excruciating, sometimes sublime, Kirk was salient in pushing boundaries of contemporary creation. Genius? I’m not qualified to say, but the man undoubtedly had greatness beyond just great.
Then my bubble burst. Somehow I missed his Blacknuss album of 1972 (six years before he died at the age of 41). I bought it on e-bay recently. I have to admit if I’d heard his version of My Girl before Hog Callin’ Blues I’d probably have turned my back on Kirk and rejected his music as stuff to play in a lift at a seedy hotel. What was his thinking in producing something so lacklustre and mediocre? Even the arrangements make little more than a barely discernible nod towards jazz.
But the great are human too. No doubt Blacknuss was a bid for commercial success. I hope it worked for him at the time. If Einstein or Masefield were to be judged by their weakest efforts, they wouldn’t today carry the respect they do. Kirk deserves the same consideration. Dare I reiterate he was the greatest ever jazzman? Of course not, but Kirk is certainly up there among the best.
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