US jazz pianist Les McCann dies
Published: Tuesday, Jan 2nd 2024, 08:00
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The American jazz pianist, singer and composer Les McCann is dead. He died on Friday at the age of 88 in a hospital in Los Angeles, as the New York Times reported, citing his long-time manager Alan Abrahams. McCann was living in a nursing home in the Los Angeles area and had been hospitalized for pneumonia.
McCann was considered an early representative of so-called soul jazz and released more than 50 albums in his lifetime. He became best known for the song "Compared to What", a protest song against the Vietnam War, which he performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 1969. According to the report, he performed it together with tenor saxophonist Eddie Harris and trumpeter Benny Bailey without the three of them having rehearsed together beforehand.
McCann was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1935 and grew up in a musical family. He, his four brothers and his sister all sang in the church choir of a Baptist congregation. His military service in the navy took him to the US west coast in San Francisco. He then settled in Los Angeles, where his career began at the end of the 1950s.
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