Rabbit Holes

The best Christmas gift in history was George Bailey being shown what the world would be like without his being born, courtesy of Angel Second Class Clarence, in the classic 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life. More recently, and in the real world, the best gift ever was the release of pianist Les McCann's Never a Dull Moment! (Live from Coast to Coast 1966–1967) a few weeks before Christmas 2023 and less than a month before his death at 88, on three vinyl LPs.

After he passed, McCann received numerous glowing obituaries, in both the jazz press and the larger international media landscape, the latter focused on his second act as a fount for hip-hop samplery. His music was borrowed more than 300 times by the likes of Snoop Dogg, Notorious B.I.G., Mobb Deep, and Cypress Hill. One hopes this provided an added revenue stream to the royalties he received on the 50+ albums he released since his first in 1960; still, such a commemoration unjustly puts McCann's original work in the shade.

McCann's 50+ albums can be segmented, roughly, into four eras. First came his early period (obviously), recording for Pacific Jazz and Limelight, where he established an aesthetic of accessible, church-inspired music that would come to be known as soul jazz. This was followed by his most famous work for Atlantic, from the Montreux Jazz Festival recordings he made with Eddie Harris (Swiss Movement, which yielded his biggest hit, "Compared to What," and netted McCann a Grammy nomination, and Second Movement) to the seminal electronica album Patterns. At the tail end of that discography, McCann's output became more commercial, more oriented around his singing, continuing with sessions for ABC, A&M, and other labels. The final period saw him move back toward the more straightahead earlier style, still singing, his playing somewhat impaired by a stroke he suffered in 1994. His final release was the 2018 holiday album A Time Les Christmas.

Never a Dull Moment!, recordings (made for Jim Wilke's KING-FM radio show) from The Penthouse in Seattle in January and February 1966 (with, oddly, a single track from August 1963) and then a 1967 Village Vanguard performance, came toward the end of the Limelight period. All the music was with acoustic trios. When Les was on the West Coast, bassist Stanley Gilbert and either Paul Humphrey or Tony Bazley on drums filled out the lineup; in New York, it was Leroy Vinnegar and Frank Severino. These lineups were comfortable and familiar: Gilbert and Humphrey backed McCann on The Gospel Truth (Pacific Jazz, 1963), while Vinnegar and Severino appear on Live at Bohemian Caverns – Washington, D.C. (Limelight, 1967). McCann worked with Humphrey and Vinnegar on other dates. This is the only document of McCann playing with Bazley.

While the Village Vanguard needs no introduction, The Penthouse could use some elucidation. Until about a decade ago, it was only known to the general jazz public as the site of the 1965 John Coltrane concert posthumously released by Impulse as Live in Seattle. Since 2014, more concerts from the venue have come to light, by Bill Evans, The Three Sounds, Wes Montgomery with the Wynton Kelly Trio, Jack Wilson, Cannonball Adderley, Johnny Griffin with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Harold Land, Bola Sete, Ahmad Jamal, Cal Tjader, and, in a nice bit of symmetry, the second known recorded full performance of A Love Supreme by Trane. The ironically named club—it was on the ground floor of the Kenneth Hotel—didn't last long, but while it was open, from 1962 to 1968, it hosted many jazz luminaries.

Several of the aforementioned recordings were produced by Zev Feldman and released on the three labels with which he is involved: Resonance, Reel to Real, and in what has become Feldman's sobriquet, Jazz Detective. Never a Dull Moment! has the hallmarks of his archival releases: thick cardboard for the trifold LP sleeve (the music is also available as a three-CD set); polylined inner sleeves; sound restoration of the original recordings by Resonance founder George Klabin and Fran Gala; mastering by Bernie Grundman; and a beautiful 12-page insert with photos, essays, and testimonials by Monty Alexander, Quincy Jones, and an artist McCann discovered: Roberta Flack.

The first two LPs contain all the Seattle recordings; the third is dedicated to the Vanguard date (which was issued previously on Joel Dorn's 32 Jazz label back in 1998). Comparing the audio, the Seattle portions have the tiniest bit of that city's endemic fog in the bass response, and one wishes the piano was a skosh more forward in the January tracks. The Vanguard recording is pristine.

The music comprises McCann originals—thankfully excluding the unsuitable-for-2023 "She Broke My Heart (And I Broke Her Jaw)," and none of his compositions with vocals—and various covers. Many of these tunes appear elsewhere in the McCann catalog (such as Live at Bohemian Caverns – Washington, D.C., Pacific Jazz sessions he made with guitarist Joe Pass, and, presciently, Much Les, his 1968 Atlantic debut). But four of the tracks found here—"Wait for It," "Da-Da," "I Can Dig It," and "Blues 5"—figure nowhere else in his discography.

As befits club dates, the tunes vary in energy, tempo, and length. McCann can be soulful, funky, introspective, or all three at once. His Seattle bandmates ably support him, making the simple sublime and the rapturous revelatory, while the New York band pushes a little harder, adding a bit more edge.

Listening to these tracks, it is easy to understand McCann's appeal. Basically self-taught—his first piano teacher as a child died six weeks after they began lessons—McCann seems incapable of overplaying. The adjective "tasteful" can imply "polite" or "lacking substance," so maybe "deliberate" is a better word. Even in a smoky jazz club, McCann has not left the church far behind. His playing is like a sermon, full of the spirit, preaching to some very enthusiastic choirs.