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Les McCann: Invitation to Openness
by C. Michael Bailey
It is a simple matter of acid-base stoichiometry like that learned in any quantitative chemical analysis or medicinal chemistry course. If one treats the acid element of Parliament Funkadelic's Maggot Brain (Westbound, 1971) with the sweet bass of Leroy Vinnegar, then infuse as with juniper with gin, with honey and morphine: Les McCann's monumental Invitation to Openness would result. Ornette Coleman may have detonated a nuclear music device with Free Jazz; A Collective Improvisation (Atlantic, 1961), but it was McCann ...
Continue ReadingLes McCann: Invitation to Openness
by Germein Linares
Les McCann is an interesting figure in jazz. After winning a talent contest on the Ed Sullivan Show in '56, McCann turned down an opportunity to join Cannonball Adderley's group, deciding instead to form his own jazz trio in Los Angeles. Playing a popular blend of hard bop and soul jazz, he signed with Pacific Jazz in '60, produced several enjoyable albums, and continued to develop and define the sound he wanted. That sound, a restless brew of jazz, funk, ...
Continue ReadingLes McCann: Pump It Up
by Craig W. Hurst
The venerable jazz pianist and vocalist Les McCann finds himself a master of funk on Pump It Up. With a “tight as a fist” rhythm section of bass, drums, guitar and Hammond B-3 organ, McCann’s band has a groove funkier than the law allows. Crisp drumming with hammering backbeats, plus chunky bass and organ figures underscore McCann’s vocals that at times more closely resemble a rap recitation than singing. Honking saxophone solos and harmonious background vocals that comment on McCann’s ...
Continue ReadingLes McCann / The Mitchell-Ruff Trio: 20 Special Fingers
by Jim Santella
The twenty fingers in the title for this double reissue CD come from two exciting piano trios of the 1960s. Both Les McCann and Dwike Mitchell offer blues-based, gospel influenced piano storytelling on their Atlantic albums Much Les and The Catbird Seat, respectively. McCann was at the peak of his career then, still using an acoustic piano and always infusing a groove into his work. Mitchell and Ruff started out at about the same time as McCann: the mid-‘50s. Bassist ...
Continue ReadingLes McCann/Mitchell-Ruff Trio: Twenty Special Fingers
by C. Andrew Hovan
The idea goes like this. The hip and jazz-loving Joel Dorn and his folks as 32 Jazz have decided to introduce a series whereby they put out two albums by different artists that are somehow related in one package. This two-disc set brings together two Atlantic classics, the previously available Much Les from Les McCann and the long out-of-print The Catbird Seat by the Mitchell-Ruff Trio. So it tells us in the opening liner notes, McCann had expressed his affection ...
Continue ReadingLes McCann/The Mitchell-Ruff Trio: 20 Special Fingers
by Douglas Payne
20 Special Fingers is an unusual two-disc combination of Les McCann's 1968 Atlantic debut, Much Les (already available on CD as a Rhino two-fer) with the Mitchell-Ruff Trio's 1961 Atlantic debut, The Catbird Seat. Joel Dorn, producer of the McCann set and owner of the label that issued this set, explains this oddity by recalling in the disc's notes a favorite McCann performance of “Yours Is My Heart Alone" (from 1964) that was evidently inspired by Dwike ...
Continue ReadingLes McCann: How's Your Mother?
by Robert Spencer
“How's Your Mother?" is a live date from 1967 that has lain in the can from then to now---not because there is anything lacking about it (quite the contrary!) but as a testament to the cornucopia of great music that was lying around everywhere in 1967, so that Trane's Interstellar Space (and around a hundred others) didn't see the light of day until the Seventies, Alfred Lion over at Blue Note was writing to Dexter Gordon that some of his ...
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