Les McCann, known for 1969 Montreaux Jazz Festival performance, passes away at 88

The legendary jazz musician Les McCann, whose compositions were sampled by numerous hip-hop musicians such as Notorious B.I.G. and Dr. Dre, passed away on Friday in the Los Angeles region. He was eighty-eight.

The artist, whose career included more than 60 albums, was diagnosed with pneumonia and admitted to a nearby hospital from the assisted living facility where he had spent the previous four years, according to his manager Alan Abrahams, who spoke with The Hollywood Reporter.

Despite having a long career, he was most renowned for performing the protest song "Compared to What" at the 1969 Montreaux Jazz Festival.

McCann teamed up with trumpeter Benny Bailey and saxophonist Eddie Harris. The New York Times claims that the three had never performed together and that there was no time for practice.

The publication quotes McCann's words from the liner notes of a reissue of the Grammy-nominated concert album Swiss Movement, which reads, “Just before we went onstage, and for the first time in my life, I smoked some hash. … [Onstage] 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 largely self-taught pianist, who was born in 1935 in Lexington, Kentucky, had participated in high school band as a sousaphone player before enlisting in the Navy at the age of 17.

“I wanted to go to the Navy School of Music,” McCann said in a 2017 interview with the Oxford American. 

The deceased further added: “In high school, whenever instruments were passed out by the school district, my school got whatever was left, whatever the other schools did not want. So I played an instrument called sousaphone, a big horn in the back of the band." 

"I played it all through my last two years of school, only to find out when I joined the Navy it was an instrument no one else used. (Now you see ’em in every marching band.) So they sent me off to Cincinnati to take a test. They brought out a tuba, and I said, ‘Wait a minute, this is not what I play.’ They said, ‘This is all we use.’ So I said, “Please do not send me back to Lexington,’” the soul Jazz pianist said.