Soul Survivors - Eugene McDaniels
Oct 22nd, 2006 by The Judge
It’s never a good sign when an interview starts with, “Fuck him.” But when I asked Les McCann to talk about Eugene McDaniels that’s just what I got. Thankfully, a half second later he admitted: “Naaaw… I love him dearly.” What’s not to love dearly about Gene McDaniels? He’s from Nebraska. He’s the son of a preacher man, but even more importantly Eugene is simply one of the kindest individuals you could ever hope to meet. “He’s very polite,” his mother explains, proudly, “He’s a perfect gentleman.” One of the first things he ever said to me was: “I don’t know what you need for your interview, but I’m probably not the person everybody thinks of me as.” He was right. I was thinking he’d be more of an old, bitter, black militant songwriter, whose distaste for the music industry and people in general forced him into hiding in rural New England. Why else would the man who penned songs like “Compared to What” and “Tell Me, Mr. President” move to Kittery Point, Maine?
I could not have been more wrong. You see, Gene is as complicated as the music he makes. He’s 71, but looks likes he’s 50. He seems well-read, but claims to have read only one book in the last five years. He spends five nights a week in a Karate class, and in the last twelve years he’s spent more time writing screenplays than he has songs. When writers try to describe his music, they usually use a lot of hyphens. Unheard of genres like “jazz-folk” and “gospel-blues” suddenly appear whenever his music is in a magazine. “My music has always been different,” he explains. “I don’t know why, but I like it that way.” Well, his music is different because Gene is different. “He was too smart for us,” explains Les McCann of their first meeting in L.A., “He knew more than we did. He knew how to read and everything. He knew how to talk to people with high educations. And I had never met a brother from Nebraska before, and I thought that was a little strange in itself!”
When he first met Les McCann, Eugene McDaniels was the athletic, six-foot, country boy son of Booker McDaniels, the bishop of the Church of God and Christ in Lincoln, Nebraska. As you can imagine, by the time he arrived on the L.A. jazz scene in the late ‘50s, he had managed to turn more than a few heads. “We were all jealous of him,” says Les. “Good looking, smart,” and according to Les, he could throw a football almost the entire length of the field. He also had a penchant for physical altercations and fast automobiles. Les remembers his first and last motorcycle ride like it was yesterday: “[Eugene] came by one day to show me his brand new motorcycle, and he insisted that I go for a ride on it with him.” Les got on, and the two peeled off through the narrow streets of Hollywood. “We came around the hill and hit a United Parcel Post truck, head on.” Les McCann was instantly thrown over Gene and ended up with a neck injury that still bothers him today.
Despite the accident, Gene and Les became inseparable. Gene sang with the Les McCann Trio six nights a week at popular L.A. nightclubs and hip coffee houses like The Lamp. “We owned Hollywood,” McDaniels proudly states of those days, “It was unbelievable.” But it wasn’t all glamour and glitz. For his first two years in L.A., Gene had a non-musical day job. “I stuffed pillows,” he says without hesitation, “But, believe me, I was the best pillow stuffer in L.A.” He was in fact, so good, that after two years, his boss offered him 50% of the business just to drop music and become a full-time pillow stuffer.
Thankfully, Eugene McDaniels decided to stick with music, and in 1960 it paid off for him. Liberty Records offered him a recording contract and without thinking too much of it, Gene accepted. There was only one problem, Les, who was already signed to Pacific Jazz, was planning to do his next album together. “Les was planning to do this album with me,” explains Gene, “but he didn’t talk to me about it!” When Les found out that his partner had signed with another label, he was really hurt. “I was young and dumb,” admits Gene today, “and didn’t understand protocol, and I screwed up our relationship. It was horrible.” Les McCann was so angry, that the two friends didn’t speak for the next five years.
As Gene embarked on his relatively impromptu solo career, he soon managed to crossover with a hit record called “A Hundred Pounds of Clay.” Of course, the song’s success didn’t do much to help his situation with Les, or to impress his L.A. jazz peers. “We knew what he could do,” explains Les, “and at that time jazz was moving along quite well, and we thought of guys who took on the context of popular music as like, ‘selling out.’” Although Gene ended up with five hits in the top five, becoming a pop star was something that would haunt him for years to come. “The music he was singing was very anti-what he was all about,” explains Les. “Pop music - I don’t know his involvement or the people he got tied up with, but it sure changed his whole life for a long time.”
Eugene McDaniels left L.A. and moved to New York under the management of a man named Jilly Rizzo. Rizzo had a club in Manhattan called Jilly’s Place, and Gene was booked there five nights a week, and lived upstairs. “I had some hell of experiences around that place,” laughs Gene today. The highlight was a phone call at midnight: “Geno, get dressed. The boss wants you downstairs… And look nice, okay.” An eerie late-night limo ride with Jilly and his bartender and bodyguard, Big Mike, followed. “Were driving and driving and driving and I’m saying ‘Oh my god, they are about to kill somebody and it might be me.’” Gene’s fear turned to paranoia when they pulled up to an abandoned building in Redhook, Brooklyn and flashed their headlights. The door in front of them opened and the limo pulled in. “It was like a movie,” chuckles Gene today, “I mean, really. It’s silly. Those guys are so dramatic.” Once they were inside, everyone got out of the limo, including the reluctant Gene. “You got the goods?” they said, “Yeah.” “Let’s see it.” One of the guys opens up a suitcase full of money that was soaked in blood. Big Mike put the suitcase in the trunk, they shook hands and got back in the limo and headed for Manhattan. As the clock approached 2am, the limo pulled up to the National Bank of North America on 5th and 51st. Big Mike got out, rang the doorbell, and the bank manager answered the door in an impeccable 3-piece suit. He led them downstairs to the vaults, and pointed them towards the big table in the center of the room. “Then they dump the money on the table. Blood and everything, and then Jilly asks me, ‘Geno, How much money is in there?’” Gene nervously guessed a million bucks. “Good guess!” laughed Jilly before making an unusual request. “Get up on the table.” After some protesting, Gene reluctantly got on the table. “Now sit down on the money.” Confused, but still scared, he sat down on the money. Then Jilly said with the straightest face possible, “Now don’t let anybody tell you that you’ve never sat on a million bucks!”
As the late ‘60s approached, Gene felt like it was time for him to get back to his roots. He left Jilly Rizzo, stopped performing his hits, and briefly returned to the jazz clubs. Immediately after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, he left America in disgust, and ended up in Copenhagen. A pissed off and frustrated Gene channeled his rage and wrote one of his most powerful songs ever. He called it “Compared to What” and after five years of silence, he decided to contact Les McCann. “I called Les and I just said look, you’ve got to forgive me, I’m a country boy, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. I was just trying to do the right thing for my life.” Les McCann decided to accept Gene’s apology and agreed to listen to his new song. Gene caught his first flight back, and played it with for Les, who still remembers thinking, “I thought it was Bob Dylan trying to talk me into something!” A year and a half later the song was not only a hit, it went on to become Les McCann’s biggest hit.
“I think I’ve never heard a song that he’s written that I didn’t like,” professes Les McCann, who watched Gene write more than fifteen tunes for Roberta Flack, and produce several albums for folks like Melba Moore, Nancy Wilson, and Shaft star Richard Roundtree. His biggest hit with Roberta Flack was called “Feel Like Makin’ Love” and got him nominated for a Grammy. “There’s hardly much to say,” Les explained towards the end of our interview, “because it doesn’t take a lot to describe what a great human being and musician that he is.”
Well, as I found out, and continue to find out, you sell yourself short if you try to categorize Eugene McDaniels. He is not quite what you think he is. He’s not anti-American, anti-government or even a flag-burner. He’s never gone to jail, never been blackballed, and isn’t bitter. He’s not even the recluse he’s rumored to be. He’s just a six-foot tall, 71-year-old man, who’s still just trying to provide for his family and make his mama proud. “Gene’s a wonderful son,” beams Ms. McDaniels, “I tried to show him a lot of love and tried to teach him the right thing, and he’s done pretty good!”
