A Conversation With Les McCann

Les McCann has a new release on Joel Dorn's 32 Records entitled How's Your Mother?. I had an opportunity to chat with the pianist/vocalist from his home about the release, his humble beginnings in Kentucky, his distaste for the current trends in music, and about the highly successful album with Eddie Harris, Swiss Movement, recorded live at the 1968 Montreux Jazz Festival.

All About Jazz: Growing up in Kentucky, what made you want to play jazz music?

Les McCann: The tricky part is defining the moment. For me, I heard so much music growing up as a child through my church, through my church gospel choir. There was a moment when I was in the military, I was in the Navy and I left home and was out on my own to see the world. I was seventeen years old and I happened to hear a record with Erroll Garner playing "Lullaby at Birdland." I had already heard some things, but I wasn't really into them. That was really the trigger moment. Once I heard that rendition of that song and the way he played it, it ignited something within me that made me want to take what I had musically to another level, from all the people who had taught me and been around. We had all grown up together, singing in the streets, my friend, who had always played good music on his radio. We didn't think of naming it, whatever it was. We just liked it or didn't like it. At this moment, being in San Francisco and hearing Erroll Garner play 'Lullaby at Birdland,' that ignited me to want to take it some place else and it made me also want to really play the piano.

AAJ: Were you influenced by any other players during those early stages of your development?

LM: No. Of course, I didn't know any difference then. I was just looking and just learning about music itself. I liked everything I heard and a whole lot of what I didn't. I lived in Kentucky. There was a choice of country music, we called it hillbilly music then, and there was a little station that came out of Tennessee that ran out of Randy's Record Shop and they played other kind of music. They played Nat King Cole. They played things that I had never heard before. There came a point in my family where we were able to purchase a radio that could get stations like that and we began to hear all kinds of music. So my early influences was just being involved with music period, no names, no persons. At another level, when I got into high school, there was a theatre that opened that featured jazz acts when they came through, so I went and saw everybody. Everybody. That was my foundation in music.

AAJ: You appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, how did that appearance come about?

LM: I was only a kid. I was in the Navy and I was shocking myself in the sense that here I am and I couldn't believe I had won a way to come to New York City. I was a seventeen-year-old kid, eighteen years old, and I had won the All Navy Talent Contest and earned my way back to New York with my singing. Getting on the show was something I knew about because there was a television in our town. Every Sunday night, we would all leave the house and go out, go around to the store that had it and watched the Sullivan Show. Weird thing that happened when I got there was that being in New York alone was a shock to me, this Kentucky boy. But at the rehearsal, I sang my song and they said OK, come back tomorrow, everything is OK, and we'll have everything ready for tomorrow. I came back and they had completely arranged it for a full orchestra and I had never even been close to a full orchestra before. I began to sing and began to play. The strings came in and I literally fainted. I fell off by piano bench because it was so beautiful and so moving. All these snippets that I'm saying now are just little moments that contribute to the whole of all the things that took me to where I wanted to go, the Ed Sullivan Show, being in the Navy, coming from Kentucky, and being around the music of the church, and being around all the musicians and the music that I had heard in San Francisco, and coming out to California, finally.

AAJ: You touched on it earlier that you listened to everybody. Is it important for younger musicians to listen to everybody?

LM: I don't think it's all that important, unless the person is interested in hearing what other people do. Now, I don't want to hear anybody. For a person who knows that they're creative, you don't have to listen to anybody. I didn't listen because I was interested in show business and what was going on stage, but how people got into this life. I didn't even realize that I could be creative at that time. I was kind of a late bloomer. But, once I found that out I said hey, I see what this is about. When you are young, you have a chance to look at everything. You can either look at everything and be inspired by many things and be as experienced as you are, or you can say no to everything like most young people do and have to wait forty years before they know who they are later.

AAJ: Swiss Movement, which you recorded with Eddie Harris for Atlantic, was a highly successful venture for you. Let's reflect back on that for a moment.

LM: First of all, I am thankful for everything that ever happened in my life, including the success and non-success of some of my recordings. That moment was recorded still in the days when I was afraid, young and afraid, playing with Eddie Harris and playing with the big boys, guys that I looked up to. To go there, to be in another country, where they always accepted me, even when I had a trio. The trio was extremely popular in Europe. To come to Montreux, which was a new experience, to play with Eddie, who was a great musician, and actually we thought the record was kind of messed up, until we heard what was happening afterwards. That experience only set up what happened in the future. I'm one of the few people who has been to Montreux more than three times, and we've been there six times. We just played there again this last summer, and they invited me back for like a coming home. Every year it gets better. You think it was a great experience for the recording was the one, but each time it gets better. So basically, all I'm saying was the whole experience was truly beneficial for me in so many ways. All the people I know in Europe and the largest fan club I have is from Switzerland, so when I go over there it's like going home. I'm just thankful for that experience and the gifts that came to me and my band, the guys that were a part of that whole experience, including Ella Fitzgerald and the people who were in the audience that were musicians.



AAJ: What about this new release on 32 Jazz, How's Your Mother, what is your reaction to it?

LM: I don't think about this record, other than the fact that some person, who without permission sat in a club and recorded it, took the music to the record company, who happens to be owned by a friend of mine, and he called me and told me he had this music. Some guy had come in and given it to him and what did I think. If I liked it, if I heard it and liked it, he would produce it and pay me. If I didn't like it, it wouldn't be out at all, which is quite unlike this other record that's out called Talking Verve. Most of the takes on the record were takes that we felt that we had thrown away when we record them at the time we made the record, many years ago. They're releasing those takes, mistakes and everything.

AAJ: Are you offended by that?

LM: No, I'm just pissed off. There's nothing I can do about it. The thing is, what I'm trying to say is that record companies do not have to let people know whether they are going to release a record or not. This guy could have walked in and sold the record to 32 Records and they could have released it without me doing nothing. But it just happened that the guy was a friend of mine that owned 32 Records and he called me and said some guy walked in with this tape, because it wasn't recorded by a record company. He was just sitting in the audience with his equipment, which I have done.

AAJ: You are referring to Joel Dorn, President of 32 Jazz. He was the producer for all of your Atlantic releases. How much did his guidance aid in your vision to record your own music?

LM: He is one of the finest recording industry people. What he brought to the table was an honesty. He said, 'Look, I'm a young kid. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. You all show me.' And that's what happened. He didn't get in the way. To me jazz has to be that way. I've been with other companies, but they always say, 'We want you to play something like some hits that are out there.' 'No, motherfucker, I don't want to do that shit!' I went over to Atlantic and they said, 'What have you got?' 'Bring it in tomorrow and we'll do it.' You call them up and let them know that this is what I want to do and they said, 'Great! Come on let's do it.' I woke up in the middle of the night one night with a great idea, called up Joel and said, 'I've got to do this.' He said, 'OK, let's get in here and do it.' It wasn't like that with any other record companies. It was a great family at Atlantic Records and Joel was the key.

AAJ: Looking back on your career, what are a few of those moments you are most grateful for?

LM: I define my success in those moments when I come in contact with someone or a moment when the light went on in my head to accept what I am, who I am, and my ability to learn, and all the benefits and things that came after that, like playing the music, and making records, and traveling, those are the side effects, or the benefits. But, the things that I appreciate are the things that I learned about myself. How I can do what I want to do. How I can create music. How it only gets better if you focus in the most loving way on yourself. This is what I've learned. Every event, every person, and every thing that's happened in my life contributes to the person that I am to this day. I am extremely thankful for them.

AAJ: With the current trend in society to get younger, move faster, to go farther, are musicians and music being rushed and underdeveloped in the aspects that you just made reference to?

LM: There will always be an argument for both sides. I can sell as many records of whoever I had with my company as long as he's selling records. When the public gets tired of buying a certain amount of their records, we're always looking for fresh new guys. Two things happen, just like any other business, sports, or whatever. The young guys are not paid a lot of money, because they don't have to pay them a whole lot of money unless they become a hit. So, the guys who are around and who want to develop their music, most of those guys are put out to pasture, unless they keep creating on their own. They have to know that the reason they did it in the first place was not because of a record company or none of that bullshit, but it was about being a musician and feeling the music yourselves. I'm about those things. I make it a point not to forget this.

AAJ: You turned down an offer to join Cannonball Adderley's group to form your own band and create you own music. How important was finding your own voice to you at that time and how important is it for you now?

LM: It's the most important thing, not just for any artist but for any human being. Who are you? What is your life about? Most people want to know that and until they see who they are and understand the greatness that they are, which is to be a human on this Earth and capable of all sorts of wonderous, great things. They are not meant to live in misery and sorrow. They should not live in bitterness and feeling unloved, because it's just not true. I'm really speaking for myself and the lessons that I learned. What's important is this moment, right now. What's important is we need to know about yourself at every stage of your life. It can change every moment as you develop, as you expand. You're not just determined by what you do. Life is just so great to me. I'm just open to every moment of it.

AAJ: What inspires you now?

LM: Love. Love is the only thing that inspires me, period. I look at love as being what creates everything, so it's all around me. When I figure I'm really beginning to understand that and I feel good about it, even that just expands and gets even better. We are so, as humans, we are so afraid of so much. We often forget the sanctity of who we really are.

AAJ: How do you define jazz?

LM: I like my definition of it better than any other. I don't know if I can even remember it because I haven't said it in so many years. I define jazz as an expression of feelings, musically through spontaneity, period.

AAJ: Do you find that spontaneity is missing right now?

LM: Oh, yes. Definitely. The creativity still is there in the whole package. But the creativity is not in the song and the next time you hear the same group playing it, they are playing it exactly the way they are playing it on the record, solos and everything. In fact, I watched these groups, some of them, their solos are completely written out, worked out, and how do they call that jazz. How can you be a jazz musician and play on records, and you're creating and you're spontaneous and you don't ever make mistakes. That's impossible.

AAJ: Does the music and the industry suffer from such predictability?

LM: No, I don't think anybody's suffering really. The record industry is not suffering. There are a lot of things that are not getting out for whatever reason, so many jazz musicians, so many young people coming, so many people love the music, people social tastes change from period to period. There are very few jazz stations and at one time every town had a jazz station. Now the fad is all talk radio. It depends on what season we're in.

AAJ: Where do you see jazz music going to in the next millennium?

LM: It's going to go wherever I take it. I can only speak for myself and can only speak for what I do. Jazz is not something that can be defined. That's the beauty of the music itself. Once we define it, which we did when we called it Dixieland, look what happened. It's now history. It's now something that seems ancient. I don't think the musicians feel like that, but once they name it and put it in a groove, bebop, bebop is old now. To me creativity is boundless. It never ends. It's like life itself. To me also, the beauty of jazz is that every group you hear will be totally different. But, you listen to the radio and you think, every group is the same. They all play the same. I call it the 'wave sound.' I hear young musicians, and I said, 'Is this your record?' They say, 'Yes.' And I say, 'This is not what I heard you play the other night.' And they say, 'Well, we're trying to get it played on the radio so we're trying to make it sound like the things you hear on the radio.' But that's what it's come to. It is the stages that many of us have to go through in order to finally wake up one day and say, 'Damn it! I'm going to be me.' And then you rejoice, and you smile, and you let go, and breathe out. You say, 'Man, there's hope for me.'

AAJ: What would you like audiences to take away from your music?

LM: A sense of joy, uplifting, release, and to feel something. I'm not selling a technique of playing. I'm selling feelings.

This article was first published at All About Jazz on December 1998.

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