Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Legacy and Influence

Legacy and Influence

• Virtuoso guitarist Jimi Hendrix "idolized" Kirk, and even hoped to one day collaborate with him.
• Trombonist Steve Turre was strongly influenced by Kirk's music (and by his use of a conch shell as a second instrument).
• Kirk's technique of humming while playing the flute was adopted later by many other players, including Dave Valentín, Jeremy Steig, Thijs van Leer and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull (who covered the Kirk tune "Serenade to a Cuckoo" on Jethro Tull's first album This Was in 1968).
• David Jackson, of Van der Graaf Generator, was also highly influenced by the style and technique of Kirk, and he plays multiple saxophones simultaneously since at least 1969.
• George Braith inherited Kirk's technique of playing multiple saxophones.
• Eric Burdon and War's debut 1970 release Eric Burdon Declares War has a track on it entitled "Roll On Kirk", which is a tribute to Kirk.
• British reed player Dick Heckstall-Smith also emulated Kirk in playing multiple saxophones simultaneously.
• Courtney Pine, a saxophonist from the UK, also uses circular breathing and plays two saxophones at once in live performance.
• Jeff Coffin, solo artist and member of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones (from 1988 on), plays multiple saxophones simultaneously.
• Thurston Moore wore a Rahsaan Roland Kirk t-shirt for a promo shoot for Sonic Youth's album Goo (1990).
• Hope Clayburn, one-time lead singer and multi-instrumentalist for funky band Deep Banana Blackout, was frequently known to hum and play flute and to sing while playing multiple saxophones at the same time, teasing common themes and soul standards.
• Jonny Greenwood, the guitarist and multi-instrumentalist of Radiohead, acknowledged his respect and love for Kirk's music on the band's blog.
• Drummer Ramon Lopez paid tribute to Rahsaan Roland Kirk in his 2002 album Duets 2 Rahsaan Roland Kirk, inviting nine differents artists (Joëlle Léandre, Thierry Madiot, Harry Beckett, Majid Bekkas, Beñat Achiary...) for nine duets on nine compositions of Kirk's.
• Guitarist Michael Angelo Batio mentioned in an interview with Ultimate Guitar Archive that Kirk's playing of two saxophones at once inspired him to create his "double guitar".
• T.J. Kirk was a San Francisco-based band named after the three artists it tributed: Thelonious Monk, James Brown, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Formed by eight-string guitarist Charlie Hunter as a side group to his own self-titled and San Francisco-based band, other members include Scott Amendola, Will Bernard and John Schott.
• Paul Weller cited the Kirk album I Talk with the Spirits (1964) as one of his 'Most Influential Albums' in an interview with The Times.
• Rahsaan Roland Kirk is the namesake of jazz artists Roland and Rahsaan Barber, brothers who play trombone and saxophone respectively.