Les McCann, Jazz Pianist and Vocalist, Dies at 88 – Billboard

Leslie “Les” McCann, an distinctive jazz pianist, composer and vocalist who found a younger Roberta Flack, and whose personal works have been sampled by numerous hip-hop artists, died final Friday (Dec. 29) on the age of 88.

Born right into a musical household, Sept. 23, 1935 in Lexington, Kentucky, McCann would turn into one in every of jazz music’s “most gifted and influential artists,” reads a press release from Kevin Gore, president of World Catalog, Recorded Music for Warner Music Group.

A self-taught pianist, McCann was an innovator within the soul jazz fashion, fusing jazz with funk, soul and world rhythms. He mastered all devices earlier than him, and loved an uncommon breakthrough, by successful a Navy expertise contest, opening the door to an look on The Ed Sullivan Present.

An early hit got here with “The Shampoo,” the 1963 instrumental reduce together with his trio for Pacific Jazz Information.

McCann would take pleasure in a fruitful relationship with Atlantic Information, releasing a dozen albums on the label from the late-‘60s by means of to the mid-‘70s.

Throughout that run, Atlantic launched Swiss Motion, that includes McCann, frequent collaborator, saxophonist and labelmate Eddie Harris, and trumpeter Benny Bailey. The album earned a Grammy nomination for finest jazz efficiency – small group or soloist with small group, and included the protest tune, “In comparison with What,” which McCann and Co. carried out on the Montreux Jazz Competition in 1969.

One other profession spotlight would are available in 1971, when McCann appeared with a starry forged of artists, together with Wilson Pickett, The Staple Singers, Santana and Ike & Tina Turner, for an historic 14-hour live performance in Accra, Ghana. The occasion was captured for the live performance movie Soul To Soul.

His ears might need been simply as spectacular as his fingers. It was McCann who found and really useful Roberta Flack to Atlantic Information.

A stroke within the Nineties slowed McCann’s output. So he channeled his energies into portray and images, and he recovered for a string of music releases, together with Pump It Up from 2002.

Gore remembers McCann as an ideal of jazz, the creator of “timeless” works. “Whereas we deeply mourn his passing,” Gore continues, “his music will stay on within the hearts of thousands and thousands of music followers throughout the globe.”