Les McCann performs on the Newport Jazz Competition in 1974.
Tom Copi/Getty Photos
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Tom Copi/Getty Photos
Les McCann performs on the Newport Jazz Competition in 1974.
Tom Copi/Getty Photos
Les McCann was already a longtime solo artist — a blues-forward jazz pianist in his 30s, with greater than two dozen albums to his identify — when he had a career-defining second on the 1969 Montreux Jazz Competition. There, throughout an impromptu jam with the saxophonist Eddie Harris, he dug into a brand new tune by his pal Gene McDaniels, which struck a cultural nerve.
The tune was “In comparison with What,” an anguished yawp of disillusionment that Roberta Flack had recorded a number of months earlier for her debut album, First Take. McCann begins his model with a rollicking vamp, which he takes via a handful of escalating key modulations earlier than a startling entry on vocals, two minutes in. With a soulful holler, he brings plainspoken fireplace to lyrics that skewer rampant greed, non secular hypocrisy and the quagmire in Vietnam: “The president, he is bought his conflict,” McCann sings within the third verse. “People do not know simply what it is for.”
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The tune’s temperament, outraged and despairing, captured one thing essential in regards to the period; so too did its rhythmic drive and righteous, consuming fervor. When Atlantic Information launched “In comparison with What” as a single, it spent 4 weeks on the Billboard Scorching 100; Swiss Motion, the reside album on which it seems, held a spot on the Billboard 200 for a 38 weeks. The tune remained a calling card for McCann for the remainder of his musical profession, which yielded many extra profitable albums — together with a sequel with Harris, Second Motion, in 1971 — in addition to samples by hip-hop artists like Huge Assault, Mobb Deep and the Infamous B.I.G.
McCann died on Dec. 29, 2023, at a hospital in Los Angeles, at 88, of pneumonia. Alan Abrahams, a veteran producer and file govt who served as his supervisor, confirmed his loss of life, noting that McCann had lived at a nursing facility for the final 4 years.
With a ringing, percussive piano fashion and a rousing command of the beat, McCann at all times amounted to multiple breakout hit may encapsulate. The grit and grease in his taking part in, knowledgeable by his early expertise within the gospel church, helped set up the subgenre referred to as soul jazz. That sound is already absolutely current on an album he recorded reside in 1961, Les McCann Ltd. Performs the Shampoo at The Village Gate. (Together with “The Shampoo,” an early hit, it contains McCann originals titled “Somebody Stole My Chitlins” and “Filet of Soul.”)
The urge to maneuver his audiences prolonged to a brand new sonic palette when McCann embraced electrical pianos and synthesizers — notably on the 1972 album Invitation to Openness, which options Yusef Lateef on assorted reeds and flutes, and Cornell Dupree on electrical guitar. His subsequent albums on Atlantic, typically incorporating synths and clavinet, shaped the idea for his recognition as a pattern supply for hip-hop producers.
Leslie Coleman McCann was born on Sept. 23, 1935 in Lexington, Ky. His father, James, labored on the Lexington Water Firm; his mom, Anna, was a homemaker who took occasional housekeeping jobs. He was one among six youngsters, with 4 brothers and a sister. “Everyone was ready of doing one of the best they may with no matter,” he recalled in a 2015 interview with Pink Bull Music Academy. “We by no means considered ourselves as being poor.”
Nonetheless, McCann grew up with restricted assets, and was nearly solely self-taught as a pianist. He performed sousaphone and drums in his highschool marching band, and enlisted within the U.S. Navy at age 17. He typically advised a narrative about listening to Erroll Garner’s recording of “Lullaby of Birdland” throughout his service, and having the sudden realization that the piano was his calling. However whereas stationed within the San Francisco Bay Space, he gained a expertise contest as a vocalist — an accolade that landed him an look on The Ed Sullivan Present in 1956.
After his discharge, he shaped a piano trio, which discovered work backing Gene McDaniels on the Purple Onion Jazz Membership in San Francisco. McDaniels took the trio on tour, after which McCann moved to Los Angeles, working at golf equipment just like the Hillcrest and signing to the Pacific Jazz label. The band that he referred to as Les McCann Ltd. recorded a string of surefooted albums, and likewise performed on the debut album by the jazz-R&B singer Lou Rawls, in 1962.
McCann ultimately left the Pacific Jazz roster for Limelight, a Mercury subsidiary overseen by Quincy Jones, earlier than touchdown at Atlantic Information. There his partnership with the producer Joel Dorn yielded numerous successes, beginning with the 1969 album A lot Les. That includes McCann’s electrical piano in opposition to a complement of strings, the album additionally spotlighted his vocals, notably on a ballad referred to as “With These Fingers,” which turned a success.
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Right here and all through his profession, McCann confronted enduring critiques of his piano taking part in, which lacked the outward sophistication and technical precision of a few of his friends, particularly those that’d mastered the lingua franca of bebop. “I feel what Les did musically, for many of his profession, was actually courageous,” attests Joe Alterman, a pianist who regarded McCann as a mentor, and launched an album in tribute final yr. “He wasn’t a bebop participant. He appreciated it, however he actually liked these joyful piano gamers. So I feel Les was type of going in opposition to the grain.”
McCann’s most up-to-date launch, simply out on Resonance Information, bolsters the purpose. Titled By no means a Uninteresting Second! Reside From Coast to Coast 1966-67, it options a couple of effervescent trio dates from the identical period, on the Penthouse in Seattle (1966) and the Village Vanguard in New York (1967). There are, in reality, some bebop tunes, like Dizzy Gillespie’s “Blue ‘n’ Boogie,” within the set checklist. However the spirit of the taking part in has little room for bebop’s idiomatic issues. It adheres as a substitute to a characterization of McCann from Bob Porter’s 2016 guide Soul Jazz: Jazz within the Black Group, 1945-1975, as “a pianist of enormously contagious enthusiasm.”
McCann was actually that, and extra moreover. He had ear for expertise: he was the one who introduced Roberta Flack to Atlantic, and he’s credited with discovering the soul-jazz organist Richard “Groove” Holmes. And he was a gifted photographer whose portraits have been anthologized within the acclaimed 2015 assortment Invitation To Openness: The Jazz & Soul Images Of Les McCann 1960-1980.
On the similar time, McCann held a steadfast devotion to sure core rules, in music as in life. “The blues is certainly one among my main religions,” he affirmed in a 1986 interview with Ben Sidran. “I imply, I like to consider no matter we do as one thing that is uplifting and giving to the world in order that it is on the optimistic facet, that’s saying that we’re right here for a function. We’re a a part of this. We do rely.”
