Live At Bohemian Caverns - Washington, D.C. (live album) by Les McCann

From EyeKanFly 01/26/2021 21:40

This album features what might be my all-time favorite album artwork. My only qualm is that McCann looks quite a bit more overweight than he actually was. While quite big, he was actually a quite adept basketball player.

McCann has been described as a very humorous person, never failing to make friends laugh, always bringing joy to others, and often making cracks to the audience in between tracks that result in applause and laughter. Live at Bohemian Caverns actually features a few of McCann's more touching quips: one in which he introduces a song as being "about a guy who just wants to be himself. Who's that? That's me." And following another song, Les makes a scathing comment about segregation bundled up as a joke. This album was actually recorded only months before the murder of Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., which sparked race riots which destroyed the neighborhood around the Bohemian Caverns: U St: considered "Black Broadway" and "Black Wall Street".

After shutting down in 1968 due to the destruction of the neighborhood, Bohemian Caverns re-opened 30 years later, before closing again in 2016. I was very fortunate to attend a jazz show shortly before it closed that year. It was nothing that rose to the incredible nature of McCann's show however.