The Pop Corporation

Jazz legend and fusion pioneer Les McCann, has left the building. Jazzers loved him, and so to did hip hop royalty, being sampled by some of the greats on numerous famous works. He was 88 years old, so we’ll raise a glass and share some of his music so you can pay the greatest of tributes to him by getting into his stuff, and letting his music live on.

McCann is perhaps best known for his epic cover ‘Compared To What’, which he performed with Eddie Harris.

A protest song against the US war with Vietnam, McCann’s live version with Harris from the Montreux Jazz Festival is the stuff of legend, and appeared on their ‘Swiss Movement’ LP.

The track was widely covered, including Ray Charles, Brian Auger, Robert Flack and more. It was heavily sampled too, notably by Cypress Hill. Lyndon B Johnson probably wasn’t much of a fan, as the track’s diatribe says: “The president, he’s got his war, folks don’t know just what it’s for; nobody gives us rhyme or reason – have one doubt, they call it treason”.

In hip hop terms, McCann has been sampled by A Tribe Called Quest, Nas, Biggie, Dr Dre, Slick Rick, Warren G and many more. Listen to ‘Go On And Cry’ and you might recognise something.

Eric B & Rakim sampled McCann on the breakneck ‘Hypnotic’, which shows the breadth of Les McCann’s style and the swing that was never absent in his groove.

McCann was a musical tour de force, releasing more than a half century of cuts, and one of our favourites is the superb, languid majesty of ‘Sometimes I Cry’, which sounds about as fresh as it ever did, decades after release.

For a largely self-taught musician who got a break with a win on a Ed Sullivan talent show, Les McCann is an inspirational and very obviously a wonderful musician. An innovator of soulful jazz, he’ll leave a huge hole in the music universe.

When reflecting on his musical life, in a 2015 interview, McCann said: “I’m a people person. I was born to be a people person. And I thank God because I am able to do what I really love doing.”

“When I go to the market, I’m talking to everybody in the store. The light I see in my eyes is the same light I get from other people who I know are happy in their life; or if I need to give someone a song, I’ll do that too. That’s just what I am.”