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Les McCann

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

Les McCann · Leslie Coleman McCann was born in 1935 in Lexington, Kentucky, into a family in which most of the children sang in church choirs. As a boy he played tuba and drums and taught himself piano for the most part. During his time in the navy he won a singing contest, which took him to The Ed Sullivan Show. He then moved to California and started a trio of his own. He turned down an offer to play with Cannonball Adderley because he wanted to make his own music. In the early 1960s he recorded with his trio for Pacific Jazz, including Jazz Waltz and McCann / Wilson.

Music and breakthrough

His breakthrough came in 1969 with Swiss Movement, a live record with the saxophonist Eddie Harris and the trumpeter Benny Bailey, recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival. It contains the protest song Compared to What, which reached the pop charts together with the album. After that McCann put more emphasis on his singing and became an innovator of soul jazz, in which jazz, funk, soul and world rhythms came together. He used electric piano, clavinet and synthesizer. In 1971 he took part in Ghana in a fourteen-hour concert for more than a hundred thousand people, which was captured in the film Soul to Soul.

Influence

After a stroke in the 1990s he returned in 2002 with Pump it Up. He kept releasing music until 2018 and was also a painter and photographer. His recordings have been widely sampled in hip-hop. McCann died in 2023.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Compared to What and notice the driving piano riff and the fierce, almost spoken singing. Note that this is a live recording: can you hear the audience joining in?

Discography

Studio albums

Mentioned in other articles

See also

Categories: ArtistsSoul jazz