Les McCann was already an established solo artist — a blues-forward jazz pianist in his 30s, with more than two dozen albums to his name — when he had a career-defining moment at the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival. There, during an impromptu jam with the saxophonist Eddie Harris, he dug into a new song by his friend Gene McDaniels, which struck a cultural nerve.
The song was "Compared to What," an anguished yawp of disillusionment that Roberta Flack had recorded several months earlier for her debut album, First Take. McCann begins his version with a rollicking vamp, which he takes through a handful of escalating key modulations before a startling entry on vocals, two minutes in. With a soulful holler, he brings plainspoken fire to lyrics that skewer rampant greed, religious hypocrisy and the quagmire in Vietnam: "The president, he's got his war," McCann sings in the third verse. "Folks don't know just what it's for."
