By Ron Wynn
Jazz pianist, vocalist and bandleader Les McCann enjoyed a visibility and popularity within the popular music world that few in his field ever receive. McCann, who passed away at the end of 2023 at 88, got that notoriety due to being sampled by numerous hip-hop performers as well as for the crossover success of an LP he made with saxophonist Eddie Harris at the Montreaux Jazz Festival.
While “Swiss Movement,” released in 1969, hasn’t sold in the quantities of “Kind of Blue” or enjoyed the critical praise and reverence of “A Love Supreme,” it was beloved not only by jazz fans but audiences across the spectrum. The single “Compared To What,” McCann’s epic vocal of the Gene McDaniels’ single was not only a big hit at the time, but became a staple of jazz and soul stations. Some of the acts who would later utilize McCann’s music include Dr. Dre, A Tribe Called Quest, Snoop Dogg, Sean Combs, The Notorious B.I.G., Warren G., Slick Rick, Mobb Deep, De La Soul, Naughty By Nature and Mary J. Blige. “Compared to What” was also recorded four months before McCann by Roberta Flack, whose signing to Atlantic was at his bequest. later Ray Charles and the Roots among other others would also record the song.
McCann was born and raised in Lexington, KY. He was mostly a self-taught pianist who had played sousaphone in high school band before leaving to serve in the U.S. Navy at the age of 17. He also sang with his siblings at the Shiloh Baptist Church there, as well as at the original Dunbar High School. He credited that upbringing with helping him develop both a love for singing and an appreciation for jazz artistry, which was the hallmark of his finest LPs not only for Atlantic, but other companies as well.
“I wanted to go to the Navy School of Music,” McCann said in a 2017 interview with the Oxford American. “In high school, whenever instruments were passed out by the school district, my school got whatever was left, whatever the other schools did not want. So I played an instrument called sousaphone, a big horn in the back of the band. I played it all through my last two years of school, only to find out when I joined the Navy it was an instrument no one else used. (Now you see ’em in every marching band.) So they sent me off to Cincinnati to take a test. They brought out a tuba, and I said, ‘Wait a minute, this is not what I play.’ They said, ‘This is all we use.’ So I said, “Please do not send me back to Lexington.’”
While in the Navy, he won a talent contest that resulted in an appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
After he was discharged, he formed a trio in Los Angeles and landed his first contact, with Pacific Jazz in 1960, after Miles Davis heard him play in a nightclub. McCann recalled when Davis approached him, telling the Oxford American, “The big names had already played, so I started playing, and when I got offstage, Miles came over to me: ‘How come you didn’t play when I was up there?’ I couldn’t even speak. He was my favorite of all musicians. He said, “Man, I like the way you play—very soulful.’”
Besides “Swiss Movement,” he and Harris did a second Atlantic LP together “Second Movement.” Perhaps his most ambitious LP musically was “Invitation to Openness.” McCann was also a gifted photographer, and the 2015 book “Invitation to Openness: The Jazz and Soul Photography of Les McCann” showcased that side of his work. Though he suffered a stroke onstage in Germany during the mid-’90s, McCann continued performing for years afterward. His last album, “Les McCann — Never a Dull Moment! Live From Coast to Coast 1966-1977,” was released on Dec. 1. It is a previously unreleased collection of live recordings, including performances from Seattle’s Penthouse jazz club in 1966 with Stan Gilbert and the Village Vanguard in 1967.
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