Dancing in Three with Les McCann
McCann and the Crusaders swing hard in waltz time, proving that jazz doesn't need four-four to swing.
Les McCann brought the Jazz Crusaders into the studio in 1963 with a simple idea: take the waltz, a form most jazz musicians treated as a novelty or a ballad vehicle, and make it swing. The result is a record that sounds like nobody forced it. McCann's piano lines don't fight the three-four time; they dance inside it. The rhythm section breathes differently than it would in straight four-four, and that breath changes everything. The horn arrangements sit loose and conversational rather than declarative. There's a lightness to the whole affair that you don't hear on records where musicians are working against the form.
What makes this album stick is that it never sounds like a gimmick. McCann had already established himself as a bandleader and session player with real chops, and he wasn't interested in cute. The Crusaders were a tight ensemble used to playing together, and that cohesion means the waltz tempos don't feel academic or slow — they feel natural. The tunes breathe at their own pace, and when McCann solos, he's not fighting the meter; he's using it. Tracks have space, a quality that gets lost on busier dates.
This is a record that matters less for changing jazz than for showing what you can do when you ignore what everybody else is doing. It never became the model for a thousand waltz records. Instead, it stands as proof that good musicians with a clear idea can take something small and make it sing. Pacific Jazz was the right home for this kind of exploratory session — the label built its reputation on exactly this kind of thinking.
