Start here: Rahsaan Roland Kirk actually could play multiple wind instruments simultaneously, for real, not as a gimmick you'd catch him faking on a good night. He'd have a tenor sax, a manzello (a modified saxello), and a stritch (a straight alto) all rigged up and going at once, playing harmonized lines like a one-man horn section. He also mastered circular breathing, which meant he could hold a note literally forever while inhaling through his nose. People sometimes dismissed this as novelty. It wasn't. Listen to Rip, Rig and Panic (1965) and you hear a guy using every tool available to say something urgent.

Kirk went blind as a small child after a botched medical treatment, and he never let that define him as a victim of anything. If you know one record, make it The Inflated Tear (1968), which is probably his most complete statement — blues, freedom, humor, tenderness, all stacked on top of each other in a way that never feels showy. He renamed himself Rahsaan after hearing the name in a dream, and by the early seventies he was folding flutes, whistles, sirens, and even a strung-together nose flute into his live sets, because why not.

He came out of the hard bop and soul jazz tradition but never stayed inside it. He'd quote Ellington and gospel hymns in the same breath as free improvisation, and he had a running argument with the jazz establishment about who got credit for what, especially around African American musicians being erased from the story of their own music. He talked about this onstage, constantly, sometimes to the point where audiences didn't know if they were at a concert or a lecture. Both, probably.

Volunteered Slavery (1969) shows him leaning harder into that political voice, mixing soul and funk grooves with straight-up sermonizing. He wasn't precious about genre lines — he'd throw a pop tune next to an avant-garde blowout on the same record and dare you to keep up.

He kept working after a stroke in 1975 left him partially paralyzed, relearning how to play with what he had left, which tells you something about how much this music actually meant to him beyond performance. Bright Moments (1973) captures him live, loose, funny, and still hitting notes most two-handed players couldn't touch. Kirk died in 1977, way too young, and he never quite got the mainstream respect his musicianship earned him — probably because people couldn't decide if he was a serious artist or a circus act. He was both, and neither description does him justice.