Les McCann is a pianist and vocalist known for his innovations in soul jazz and his 1969 recording of the protest song “Compared to What”.

Les McCann Age

He was 88 years old.

Les McCann Height

 173 cm (5 ft 8 in).

Les McCann Nationality

American

Les McCann Biography

Leslie Coleman McCann was born on Sept. 23, 1935, in Lexington, Ky.,

Mr. McCann began playing piano at age 3 and a few years later had a music teacher, who charged 35 cents a lesson. (Those lessons did not last long: She died only six weeks after he began studying with her.) While attending Dunbar High School in Lexington, he played drums and sousaphone in the marching band.

Les McCann Death

He died on Friday in Los Angeles.

His death, at a hospital where he had been admitted with pneumonia, was confirmed on Monday by Alan Abrahams, his longtime manager and a producer of several of his albums. Mr. McCann had lived for the past four years at a skilled nursing facility in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Les McCann Parents

He was born to James and Anna McCann. His father was a water maintenance engineer.

He left Kentucky at 17 when he enlisted in the Navy and was posted to the San Francisco area.

Les McCann Siblings

His family was a musical one; he, his four younger brothers, and his sister all sang in the Shiloh Baptist Church choir.

Les McCann Wife

His wife is unknown

Les McCann Children

His children if he has any are unknown.

Les McCann Net Worth

His net income is estimated to be between $1 Million – $5 Million dollars. He has made such an amount of wealth from his primary career as

Les McCann Career

He released more than 50 albums but had his greatest commercial success with “Compared to What,” a recording that came together at the last minute in 1969.

Les McCann, a jazz pianist, and vocalist who was an early progenitor of the bluesy, crowd-pleasing style that came to be known as soul jazz, and who, although he released more than 50 albums, was best known for a happenstance hit from 1969.

Mr. McCann’s earthy, uplifting approach to music was a product of his upbringing in a churchgoing family. As he came to emphasize his singing more and play electric keyboards, his albums, released from 1960 to 2018, influenced funk and R&B artists and became a rich vein for hip-hop artists to mine.

His greatest commercial success, though, came purely by chance, in June 1969 at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

Already a recording veteran by then, with albums on Pacific Jazz, Limelight, and, most recently, Atlantic, Mr. McCann was appearing at the festival for the first time. After he and the tenor saxophonist Eddie Harris, also an Atlantic artist, played separate sets, they gave an unscheduled performance together, with Mr. Harris as well as the expatriate trumpeter Benny Bailey joining Mr. McCann’s trio.

Neither had played with Mr. McCann before, and there was no time for rehearsal. But the performance was to be recorded and filmed for broadcast.

Despite the pressure, or perhaps because of it, as Mr. McCann recalled in the liner notes for the 1996 CD reissue of the concert album, which was released in 1969 as “Swiss Movement,” “Just before we went onstage, and for the first time in my life, I smoked some hash.”

When he got to the bandstand, he wrote, “I didn’t know where the hell I was. I was totally disoriented. The other guys said, ‘OK, play, man!’ Somehow I got myself together, and after that, everything just took off.”

The highlight of the concert was Eugene McDaniels’s protest song “Compared to What.” Stretching past eight minutes and featuring Mr. McCann’s churchy vocals, “Compared to What” would be released as a single and peak at No. 35 on the Billboard R&B chart. “Swiss Movement” was nominated for a Grammy Award and went on to sell a half-million copies.

Mr. McCann and Mr. Harris reconvened in 1971 for the Atlantic studio album “Second Movement.” They also returned to Montreux for the 1988 festival, where they performed an obligatory reprise of “Compared to What.”

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