Les McCann's manager and producer, Alan Abrahams, announced to the public that the artist died on December 29 at the age of 88 in Los Angeles.
As it turned out, he had been taken to hospital with pneumonia a week earlier, and eventually died as a result of the disease. The lion's share of the boom in the soul and jazz genre was taken by the jazz singer and pianist, artists such as Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, and the bands A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and Mobb Deep. He is nourished by his work – writes A daily Mail.
Born in Kentucky, Les McCann's career dates back to the 1950s, when he won a singing competition while serving in the U.S. Navy and was invited to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.
He taught himself to play the piano and was admired by many celebrities, including Quincy Jones. His first album was released in 1960 He plays the truth entitled, which was followed by others. There are over sixty albums in total, the last of which debuted in 2018.
His most famous songs are Compared to whatIt is a mixture of jazz and gospel styles. McCann was one of the pioneers in combining jazz, soul and funk styles. During his career, he toured with musicians such as Wilson Pickett, Santana, The Staples Singers or Ike & Tina Turner. He suffered a stroke in the mid-nineties, but that did not stop him, so he returned to music in 2002 and never retired. He spent the last four years of his life in a nursing home. Speaking to Oxford American magazine in 2017, he said:
I wanted to go to the Naval School of Music. During my high school years, when the school district distributed kits, my school got leftover kits that other schools didn't want. So I started playing an instrument called the sousaphone, On a large trumpet in the back rows of the orchestra. I played all through the last two years of school, But when I joined the Navy, I realized it was a tool that no one else was using
He coined.
(Cover image: Getty Images)
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