Boys, thanks for the thoughts on Roland Kirk. For my two cents he's one of the most interesting jazz musicians in the pantheon, which doesn't necessarily make him the most appealing or the easiest listen. He was inconsistent and mercurial, and at times pushed the boundaries of what most people look for in jazz.

He's known more for his remarkable musicianship than his writing / arranging, but I believe his extraordinary playing hampered his rep as a writer. All of his great records - I would include "The Inflated Tear", "Don't Cry My Beautiful Edith", "I Talk With the Spirits", "Rip Rag and Panic", and "Left and Right" - are filled with Kirk's compositions - nothing in the way of "standards" playing here....and generally speaking, his music plays against the traditional stodginess of jazz (though not as radically as the free movement) to yield an almost uncontainable love of life, soulfulness, and blackness. To my ears he produced some of the best jazz music of the sixties. But if you're concerned that much of the sixties jazz is too cacophonic for your tastes, Kirk has tons of melody, unique and memorable compared to the free and post bop players of that decade.

I would start with The Inflated Tear - "A Handful of Fives" and the title track - and then move onto Rip Rag and Panic's "No Tonic Pres". and I Talk With the Spirits' "Serenade to a Cuckoo" (this is an all-flute record FYI) If those tracks don't do it for you, Rahsaan may not be your guy.

Incidentally Stu, Bright Moments is a great record, but very different from Kirk's sixties music. As you say, it's a seventies groove record, a real artifact from its time. Give some of those great sixties records a chance and you may be pleasantly surprised.

Mike - in terms of David Gray, I have to confess I don't know his music well, and have always avoided him just based on his reputation for blandness. Sounds like there's more to it than I had given him credit for, and I've taken a quick listen to White Ladder in the last couple of days, which has at the very least earned more listens.

So I'll throw it over to one of y'all to suggest another artist - and I would support keeping them on the (relatively) obscure side.