{"id":7517,"date":"2015-03-30T05:30:15","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T09:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=7517"},"modified":"2015-10-19T13:20:17","modified_gmt":"2015-10-19T13:20:17","slug":"back-to-school-with-les-mccann-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/03\/30\/back-to-school-with-les-mccann-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to School with Les McCann (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Invitation to Openness<\/em> is not only the title of one of jazz great Les McCann<\/strong>‘s most celebrated albums (newly reissued; more on that later); it’s also the title of his new book of photography and essays. Throughout his storied career as a touring and recording jazz musician, McCann came face to face \u2013 in personal, intimate settings \u2013 with legends in music, film and public life. An accomplished amateur (though he’d effectively \u201cgo pro,\u201d as we’ll see), McCann shot countless photos in crisp black-and-white, capturing his subjects in a knowing manner that (for example) publicity photos often fail to convey.<\/p>\n

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And one of the book’s most striking qualities is its variety. McCann’s lens captures onstage photos, backstage photos. He includes posed shots, candids. His subjects are famous musicians and unidentified people. Comics like Richard Pryor<\/strong> and Redd Foxx<\/strong> are featured, as are photos taken at pro basketball games. Yet somehow, with all this diverse imagery, there’s a unifying aesthetic within the pages of Invitation to Openness<\/em>. \u201cEvery artist, every creative project has a sequence,\u201d McCann says. That gives the finished work flow and rhythm, he says. A project like his book, then, is \u201cbased on something you haven’t seen before. So you’re looking at [the raw material], assessing it: now what do I do with it?<\/em> And maybe you can’t do it, so you get somebody whose eye you can trust.\u201d And in this case, McCann had a pair of collaborators that he describes as his \u201ccorps of angels\u201d: his longtime manager and confidante Alan Abrahams<\/strong>, and Pat Thomas<\/strong>, author of the book Listen Whitey: The Sounds of Black Power<\/em>. \u201cI took all of the pictures,\u201d McCann says, \u201cbut then I put it in their hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was some healthy back-and-forth involved in the book’s creation. \u201cI gave them all my pictures,\u201d McCann recalls. \u201cAnd they came up with about 700, I think. And then we narrowed it down to about 300 or so: ‘What do you think of these?’ ‘Yeah, I like that.’ ‘No, I don’t want that.’\u201d McCann notes that initially, the project was to focus only on his photos of jazz musicians. \u201cBut my photographs are not just one thing, like my music is not just one thing. So they got the message.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>Some of the photos in Invitation to Openness<\/em> are left to speak for themselves; others include McCann’s annotation. McCann writes that the book’s early 1970s photos of jazz great Julian \u201cCannonball\u201d Adderley<\/strong> are some of his favorites. \u201cThere’s a little story that goes with that in the book,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was the first time somebody picked one of my photographs, saying, ‘We’d like to use this.’ And they paid me for it.\u201d But the Japanese magazine made an amusing error. \u201cThey put my name in there as ‘Les McCann Keyboard!’ I liked that, y’know? I’ve been all over the world, and people have called me everything.\u201d Reflecting on fellow soul-jazz giant Adderley, McCann says, \u201cI have nothing but fond memories of his joyful life, his joyful music, and his zest to be great. And [seeing him] was the first time that I went to a club and was totally<\/em> blown away with everything I heard the band play.\u201d<\/p>\n