On August 10, pianist Joe Alterman released his latest album, Joe Alterman Plays Les McCann: Big Mo & little joe, a tribute to his long time friend and mentor, the epochal composer, pianist, and vocalist. Big Mo is hospitalized and unable to play. He is more than 50 years Alterman’s elder, and the two have “barely gone a day without talking since we met.,” Alterman said.
That was in 2011, at the Blue Note in Greenwich Village. Alterman was doing a sound check preparing to open for McCann, when in came the soul-jazz legend, rolled up to him in his wheelchair, and told him, “Play me some blues, boy.”
It was early in college when Alterman “had my Les McCann epiphany,” he told ArtsATL, the online publication covering the arts in Atlanta. “I was getting a lot of pressure to play modern. They wanted me to get away from Red Garland and into Herbie Hancock. But I liked the old school. I remember hearing an early Les McCann tune, ‘Fish This Week But Next Week Chitlings.’ He was doing all the things I was being told not to do. Like, I didn’t know anything could be dirtier than Oscar Peterson. Maybe something about his growing up in Kentucky. I loved everything about his music. He was like a savior to me because of the pressure I was under to sound different than me. For three or four years all I listened to was Les. Then meeting him at the Blue Note, I remember being so nervous. He told me to play the blues and when I finished, he just said, ‘Amen.’”
McCann is best known for his “Compared to What” with saxophonist Eddie Harris, “but there’s so much more to him that people don’t know about, and one is how great a composer he was,” Alterman said. “So when we’d get together on Facetime these last eight years, I’d surprise him and play one of his songs. Over those years I learned a lot of his music. I’ve been thinking about the album, the right repertoire, etcetera, since 2020. I finally narrowed it down and recorded it one night last November.”
“Alterman is a technically efficient player who utilizes an array of pianistic skills from brilliant glissando runs, gospel-inspired get-downs, barrelhouse style honky-tonk, and shimmering tremolos to earthy blues,” writes Jazz Journalist Ralph Miriello in his review of the album. “He abides by advice given to him by master pianist Ahmad Jamal, who told him ‘Technique without soul is meaningless.’ Alterman oozes with soul and his genuine joy when playing makes listening to him infectiously uplifting.”