Roland Kirk: You Did It, You Did It

Among the portable pawnshop of strange instruments slung around Roland Kirk's neck was an ordinary transverse flute. Ordinary, that is, until he played it. Not even the Marquis de Sade could have more thoroughly debauched this genteel staple of 18th-century Parisian salons. Under the roguish Captain Kirk's aegis, the celestial flute beamed down to earth faster than a photon torpedo. Throughout this slow, accusatory blues, the Captain spits, snarls, grunts through, and otherwise gutturally accosts his flute for 2½ wrenchingly expressive minutes. Oh, and lest we forget, it's funnier than a Marx Brothers movie. A fabulous track by an incomparable jazzman.