Inflated Tear – Rahsaan Roland Kirk

This live recording is the earliest known version of this song. There is a very good video of this performance (see above for a portion); it's great to watch Kirk in action. Concert Melody transcriptions are available for this version and the later studio recording (click on the second album cover); either can be used as the lead sheet, as his versions of the piece vary slightly. For a detailed description of the piece itself, click on the second album cover ("The Inflated Tear"). The audio clip above starts with C and goes into the ballad melody.

The B minor part of the three-horn theme is arranged slightly differently in this version from the later studio version; here only the top voice moves instead of both the top and middle. The middle part holds out F♯ in the first measure and A in the second; in later versions both measures start on A. The articulations are also notably different. The ballad sections are not as slow, and directly follow the preceding sections without the bell interludes of the studio version. In these sections Kirk uses his trademark circular breathing to create an uninterrupted melodic line. Like the studio version this one opens with essentially a flexatone/bass duo improvisation [clip]; the video shows that Kirk is playing two flexatones simultaneously! The end of this version extends the theme over rhythm section hits with a series of trilled chords.

The melody transcription for this recording shows how Kirk orchestrated the single-player three-horn voicings. On the music, the letters S M and T indicate which note is played by which horn. The tenor is always on the bottom, but the manzello (soprano) and stritch (alto) alternate the top and middle parts. The first two measures, for example, have the stritch on top; the manzello is on top for the third and fourth measures. In the first two measures he fingers the manzello and stritch; with the latter on the higher note, both instruments' pitches are one-hand ("left-hand") fingerings. When two of the three instruments are fingered, the third is left to play its open note, transposed as open C♯; thus the tenor can only play concert B on the first two measures, and the stritch concert E for the third and fourth measures when he switches his left hand to the tenor. The chord on beat 3 of the third measure at first seems impossible, for while the manzello's note is concert A# (C in the transposed key, a one-fingered note), the tenor has concert D♯, a transposed F which is (usually) a two-handed fingering. However, Kirk's tenor was modified with extra left-hand pinky keys that hold down some of the lower, right-hand pads, increasing the range of notes that can be fingered with only the left hand. An ingenious solution to a unique challenge. This video doesn't show the extra keys clearly, but we found a still from another video where you can see what they look like.

The video on this page starts with the melody; the full video on YouTube has the intro.

The Inflated Tear ranks among the deepest and most impassioned of all of Kirk's compositions. It showcases not only his stunningly original three-saxophone technique, but also specifically the custom-modified keywork of his tenor saxophone. The specific three-part harmonies arose partly out of the necessity of only being able to finger two of the three horns at a time. This, however, does not limit in any way the facility and emotional power of this piece. The first section, where he plays unaccompanied, begins with a sort of E major tonality and then moves to B minor. It is played freely, with the kind of slightly rubato yet precisely placed timing that he excelled at. This section is particularly striking in its contrasting articulations, with alternating longer phrases and shorter single notes. The rhythm section enters for the next section (notated as D), where the same theme is reworked in a Mingus-esque ballad setting. Rahsaan plays stritch (alto) for this part, a repeated eight-measure phrase which leads into a series of accented rhythm section hits. The trio theme returns over these hits. Rahsaan does not open this form up for solos; here, the B minor part of the opening theme is played unaccompanied again, followed by one more ballad/hits section (G and H).

On this recording, Rahsaan plays an intro on his various small percussion instruments including flexatones, in a duo improvisation with the bass [clip] before beginning the theme. He sets up the ballad sections with a few chimes of some sort of bells (or possibly a toy piano), as shown in the Concert Melody Transcription. At the end, he continues in a solo improvisation using the same bells, together with stritch and then with recorder.

This later version is much freer and adds an open solo section. Rahsaan varies the articulations of the trio theme, and the ballad sections are slightly rubato with a fermata at the end of the fourth measure. The solo section is between the second unaccompanied section and the following ballad section. Rahsaan plays an unaccompanied trio improvisation, working in a chorus of G blues (the key he usually used for three-horn blues heads) and a quote of the bridge of Miles Davis' Milestones. There is no intro this time, but the end is a solo improvisation, mostly on stritch, like the studio recording.

The Concert Melody Transcriptions for the live version in Prague as well as the Atlantic recording are available on this page (as well as under the applicable album covers). No transcription is available for this version.