Les McCann, a prolific and influential musician and recording artist who helped discovered the soul-jazz style and have become a favourite supply for sampling by Dr. Dre, A Tribe Referred to as Quest and lots of of different hip-hop performers, has died. He was 88.
McCann died Friday in Los Angeles every week after being hospitalized with pneumonia, in line with his longtime supervisor and producer, Alan Abrahams.
A Lexington, Kentucky, native, McCann was a vocalist and self-taught pianist whose profession dated again to the Nineteen Fifties, when he received a singing contest whereas serving within the U.S. Navy and appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Present,” the highest selection program of its time. With admirers together with Quincy Jones and Miles Davis, he went on tour worldwide and launched dozens of albums, beginning in 1960 with “Les McCann Ltd. Performs the Reality.”
He was finest identified for “In comparison with What,” a cool protest track on which he first teamed up together with his future musical associate, saxophonist Eddie Harris. Written by Eugene McDaniels and recorded reside on the 1968 Monteaux Jazz Competition, “In comparison with What” blended jazzy riffs and McCann’s gospel-style vocals. The track condemned warfare, greed and injustice with such couplets as “No one provides us rhyme or purpose/Have one doubt, they name it treason.”
Amongst these protecting “In comparison with What” was Roberta Flack, a McCann protégé whose profession he helped launch by establishing an audition with Atlantic Data. McCann was a pioneer in merging jazz with soul and funk. He would report with Flack and tour with such common musicians as Wilson Pickett, Santana and the Staples Singers.
His different albums included “Discuss to the Individuals” (1972), “Layers” (1973) and “One other Starting” (1974). Final month, Resonance Data issued “By no means A Boring Second! – Stay from Coast to Coast (1966-1967).”