Fact #105834
When:
Short story:
Jazz flute virtuoso Roland Kirk spends the first of two days recording the album I Talk With The Spirits, at Nola Penthouse Sound Studios, New York City, USA.
Full article:
Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) : In Jethro Tull, right from the start, I was not playing the flute as a flute player, or even as a saxophone player. I was playing it as a guitar player. Everything I knew about riffs and improv and phrasing came from what I knew about playing the guitar. I was playing the flute but I was still thinking guitar, and if there was a role model, it was Eric Clapton whose riffs and improv inspired my flute playing. I was conditioned to think in terms of guitar lines. So the flute became a dominant force in the band, but it was inspired by the way guitarists played. It wasn't playing decorative folksy stuff, it was quite brutal and aggressive. I certainly wasn't inspired by any other flute players because I didn't actually listen to any.
I had only managed to coax notes out of the flute by singing at the same time as I played. So that scat-singing technique became the technique I employed.
I think it was around February 1968 that Jeffrey Hammond played to me a Roland Kirk album called I Talk With The Spirits, where I discovered that, like Eric Clapton, Roland Kirk was already out there and way in front of me in his ability and, in particular in the vocalization thing.
Nevertheless, I was already going down that route, so the Roland Kirk song Serenade To A Cuckoo was one that I was able to pick up just by listening a couple of times to that album. It was a bluesy-jazz piece that quite practical and easy to play. We introduced that on stage from about March onwards and, of course, covered it on our first album.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, September 2011)
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I had only managed to coax notes out of the flute by singing at the same time as I played. So that scat-singing technique became the technique I employed.
I think it was around February 1968 that Jeffrey Hammond played to me a Roland Kirk album called I Talk With The Spirits, where I discovered that, like Eric Clapton, Roland Kirk was already out there and way in front of me in his ability and, in particular in the vocalization thing.
Nevertheless, I was already going down that route, so the Roland Kirk song Serenade To A Cuckoo was one that I was able to pick up just by listening a couple of times to that album. It was a bluesy-jazz piece that quite practical and easy to play. We introduced that on stage from about March onwards and, of course, covered it on our first album.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, September 2011)