Biography

In 1969, Atlantic Records released Swiss Movement, a recording of McCann with regular collaborator and saxophonist Eddie Harris and guest trumpeter Benny Bailey at that year's Montreux Jazz Festival. The album contained the song "Compared To What," and both the album and the single were huge Billboard pop chart successes. "Compared To What" featured political criticism of the Vietnam War. The song was not actually written by McCann; fellow Atlantic composer/artist Eugene McDaniels (A Hundred Pounds of Clay) wrote it years earlier. "Compared To What" was initially recorded and released by soul vocalist Roberta Flack. Her version appeared as the opening track on her debut recording, First Take (1969).

After the success of Swiss Movement, McCann — primarily a piano player — began to emphasize his rough-hewn vocals more. He became an innovator in the soul jazz style, merging jazz with funk, soul and world rhythms; much of his early 1970s music prefigures the great Stevie Wonder albums of the decade. He was among the first jazz musicians to include electric piano, clavinet, and synthesizer in his music.

In 1971, he and Harris were part of a group of soul, R&B;, and rock performers — including Wilson Pickett, The Staple Singers, Santana and Ike & Tina Turner — who flew to Accra, Ghana for a historic 14-hour concert before more than 100,000 Ghanaians. The March 6 concert was recorded for the documentary film Soul To Soul. In 2004 the movie was released on DVD with an accompanying soundtrack album.

Les discovered Roberta Flack and obtained an audition which resulted in a recording contract with Atlantic Records.

A stroke in the mid 1990s sidelined McCann for a while, but in 2002 he released a new album, Pump it Up.

Discography

Appeared on

Samples

References

External links

Category:1935 births Category:Living people Category:Soul-jazz pianists Category:Hard bop pianists Category:Musicians from Kentucky Category:Jazz-funk pianists Category:People from Lexington, Kentucky Category:Post-bop pianists Category:American jazz pianists Category:Atlantic Records artists

Eddie Harris (October 20, 1934 – November 5, 1996) was an American jazz musician, best known for playing tenor saxophone and for introducing the electrically amplified saxophone. He was also fluent on the electric piano and organ. His best-known compositions are "Freedom Jazz Dance", recorded and popularized by Miles Davis in the 1960s

Biography

After college, he was drafted into the United States Army and while serving in Europe, he was accepted into the 7th Army Band, which also included Don Ellis, Leo Wright, and Cedar Walton.

Leaving military service, he worked in New York City before returning to Chicago where he signed a contract with Vee Jay Records. His first album for Vee Jay, Exodus to Jazz included his own jazz arrangement of Ernest Gold's theme from the movie Exodus. A shortened version of this track, which featured his masterful playing in the upper register of the tenor saxophone, was heavily played on radio and became the first jazz record ever to be certified gold.

The single climbed into the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and reached #16 in the U.S. R&B; chart. Some jazz critics, however, regarded commercial success as a sign that a jazz artist had sold out and Harris soon stopped playing "Exodus" in concert. He moved to Columbia Records in 1964 and then to Atlantic Records the following year where he re-established himself. In 1965, Atlantic released The In Sound, a bop album which won back many of his detractors.

Over the next few years, he began to perform on electric piano and the electric Varitone saxophone,

Harris also came up with the idea of the reed trumpet, playing one for the first time at The Newport Jazz Festival of 1970 to mostly negative critical feedback. From 1970 to 1975, he experimented with new instruments of his own invention (the reed trumpet was a trumpet with a saxophone mouthpiece, the saxobone was a saxophone with a trombone mouthpiece, and the guitorgan was a combination of guitar and organ), with singing the blues, with jazz-rock (he recorded an album with Steve Winwood, Jeff Beck, Albert Lee, Ric Grech, Zoot Money, and other rockers). He also started singing and to perform comic R&B; numbers like "That is Why You're Overweight" and "Eddie Who?".

Harris died in hospital in Los Angeles from bone cancer and kidney disease, at the age of 62.

Discography

References

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Category:1965 births Category:Criss Cross Jazz artists Category:Blue Note Records artists Category:Palmetto Records artists Category:American jazz tenor saxophonists Category:Living people

Billy Taylor (July 24, 1921 December 28, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and since 1994, he was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Taylor was a also a Jazz activist. He sat on the Honorary Founders Board of The Jazz Foundation of America. In 1989, Billy Taylor, Ann Ruckert, Herb Storfer and Phoebe Jacobs started The Jazz Foundation to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly jazz and blues musicians, later including musicians that survived Hurricane Katrina.

Biography

Early life

Among his most notable works is "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free", composed in 1954, and subsequently achieving more popularity with Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Nina Simone covered the song in her 1967 album Silk and Soul. It is widely known in the UK as a piano instrumental version, used for BBC1's Film programme, hosted by Barry Norman and subsequently Jonathan Ross. Solomon Burke, Derek Trucks, The Lighthouse Family, Levon Helm and Jools Holland & His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra have also recorded versions.

Later career

Taylor remained active with his educational activities and continued to tour and work into his eighties. He continued to work for over 50 years. He visited the White House several times and he received awards from a President and a New York Governor. Taylor received an Emmy award for his work for television which includes carrying out over 250 interviews on behalf of CBS News Sunday Morning. and a host of prestigious and highly coveted prizes, such as the National Medal of Arts (1992), the Tiffany Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Down Beat Magazine. He was also honored in 2001 with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Jazz Living Legend Award, and election to the Hall of Fame for the International Association for Jazz Education.

Discography

As leader

As sideman

References

External links

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