In 1976, 1977 & 1978, my big sister was off to college and for the first time ever, I was an only child around our house. I don't recall anything particularly personally amazing happening during that period; I had a job at the golf course, played on the golf team, did school plays, played trumpet in the band, yearbook and school newspaper editor -- basically filled the days with typical high school stuff.
The amazing shit that happened was being exposed to some music that turned out to really shape my musical taste for my life. Lots of it, I remember exactly where I was when I heard it. Like this song, "Compared to what". (thanks to Chuck for posting this on his FB wall this morning and causing this e-reverie)
One weekend, I'm not sure why or how, I went down to visit my big sister at the University of Kentucky. (I think I may have actually done this twice.) Prior to college, she hadn't brought too much new music into my world, but after she got to UK, the hits just kept on coming. First, she dated some dude who was a bluegrass fiddler. That's where my love of bluegrass music comes from. Then she dated some other dude, I forget his name or details, but I was in his apartment one evening and heard this song. On the record player. The record cover was this:
It blew my mind. So good. So much swing, so much teeth. I later bought my own copy of the album as well as a coupla albums by the sax player Eddie Harris Jr., including "Eddie sings the blues", which I found in the dollar rack of my local Peaches Records in Dallas, TX, USA, when I was in college, and which had one of the coolest back of the album pics ever. Here it is, with Eddie front and center in his shark skin suit and the mysteriously casual pipe smoker behind him in a mauve wife beater:
Mauve wife-beater! Anyway, I digress (and oh, what a fun digression its been) -- without further ado, (actually, here's a link to some info on the song, from Les McCann's wikipedia page) here are Les McCann (piano and vocals) and Eddie Harris, Jr. (tenor sax), Benny Bailey (trumpet) LeRoy Vinegar (bass) and Donal Dean (drums) doing the kick ass, anti-war song "Compared to what":
