Les McCann & Eddie Harris

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Les McCann & Eddie Harris · Les McCann was an American jazz pianist and singer, born in 1935 in Lexington, Kentucky. He grew up in a musical family, played tuba and drums as a boy and taught himself piano for the most part. During his military service in the navy he won a singing contest and appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. He then started a trio of his own in California and recorded for Pacific Jazz in the early 1960s.

Music and breakthrough

In 1969 the album Swiss Movement was released on Atlantic, recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival with the saxophonist Eddie Harris and the trumpeter Benny Bailey. It contains Compared to What, a protest song against the war in Vietnam, written by Eugene McDaniels. McCann had already recorded it as a ballad in 1966. Both the song and the album reached the American pop charts. In 1971 McCann and Harris took part in a concert in Accra, captured in the film Soul to Soul.

Influence

After Swiss Movement McCann put more emphasis on his singing. He was regarded as an innovator of soul jazz, in which jazz meets funk, soul and world rhythms. He used electric piano, clavinet and synthesizer. His recordings have been sampled in hip-hop by almost three hundred artists. McCann died in 2023.

Listening

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  Compared to What · Les McCann & Eddie Harris, 1969