Six Degrees of Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse

Gene McDaniels had a good 1961. The congenial, Kansas City-born and Omaha-raised soul singer scored three Top 5 hits, including the iconic million-seller "A Hundred Pounds of Clay." His chart successes landed him parts in Ring-A-Ding Rhythm and The Young Swingers, and he went on to release a string of well-received albums over the course of the decade. He eventually transitioned to work as a songwriter for Atlantic Records, and in... 1974, generations removed from his days as a smiling crooner, McDaniels scored his biggest hit, penning Roberta Flack's Grammy-winning, feel-good chart-topper, "Feel Like Makin' Love." Between these two poles, however, McDaniels recorded one of the strangest and most imaginative soul albums of all time. Inspired by the protest and empowerment movements of the late 1960s, McDaniels reinvented himself, if temporarily, as Eugene McDaniels, "the left rev. mc d," the dark prophet of psychedelic soul. As well-constructed and nook-filled as any soul album you'll hear, Headless Heroes was McDaniels' attempt to both embody and redirect all the anguished energies of post-civil rights America. There are brilliant songs here, like the haunting, wheezing "Jagger the Dagger" and the cheerfully paranoid "Lovin' Man." But Headless Heroes is distinguished by its quieter moments: the spare "Susan Jane," the loose "Freedom Death Dance." While other artists, including McDaniels' trusted confidante Roberta Flack, wove themes of protest into their music, few achieved the kind of sustained, album-length fire of Headless Heroes. And while fellow travelers like the Last Poets or the Watts Prophets assailed clearer bulls-eyes, few albums of political soul sound quite as stirring or complex as this one. It remains one of the oddball masterpieces of 1970s soul and a vexing hiccup during McDaniels' otherwise smooth career.

In 1969, McDaniels witnessed firsthand what might happen if political protest invaded the pop marketplace. The McDaniels-penned "Compared to What" had already been making the rounds as the opening cut of Roberta Flack's 1969 debut. But once jazz legends Harris and McCann recorded a version later that year for this live album one of the best selling jazz albums of all-time it became a bona fide hit. It unfolds patiently over the... first two minutes, McCann's urgent piano and Donald Dean's steady drumming carving out space for Harris' snaking saxophone. But the dignified grizzle of McCann's singing suggests this isn't just another soul-jazz excursion. A litany of ills spills forth: shady leaders, unjust wars, two-faced neighbors, consumerist frenzies, "unreal values, crass distortion." "Tryin' to make it real but compared to what?" he wonders. Perhaps as an ironic nod to Harris, famed for his composition "Freedom Jazz Dance," McDaniels titled the first track on Side B of Headless "Freedom Death Dance."

McDaniels' Atlantic debut, 1970's Outlaw, prepared listeners for the aggressive, dark-as-apocalypse turn of Headless. But nothing really prepared anyone for Outlaw. "She's a nier in jeans," he warbles on the title track, doing his best impression of honky-tonk Mick Jagger, all while elevating a sans brassiere lady to the status of counterculture hero. Like much of what follows, it's debatable whether Outlaw is an ironic, hippy-folk joke or an earnest attempt to... graft country spunk with soul and jazz grooves. It's an interesting document of McDaniels in transition. There are direct and seemingly literal pleas about the state of the union ("Love Letter to America," "Silent Majority"), an approach he would jettison by the following year. And then there is the anguished, gorgeous, folksy "Cherrystones," a tear in McDaniels' voice as he bellows, "Long as I have my clams I don't give a damn," the weary grain of his voice foreshadowing the ruptures at the heart of his 1971 follow-up.

Headless Heroes would become a treasure for latter-day enthusiasts of 1970s soul, particularly among hip-hop producers. It's a surprisingly durable source text: "Get it together," McDaniels exclaims on the title cut, accidentally birthing a Beastie Boys hit decades later; a shard from the freaky, descending intro of "Lost in the Supermarket" manages to make Quasimoto's "Return of the Loop Digga" seem that much weirder. But Organized Konfusion's "Black Sunday" remains the... most faithful tribute. Prince Po and Pharoahe Monch's bluesy, mournful raps accent the slow, discordant dirges of "Freedom Death Dance" and "Jagger the Dagger." One of hip-hop's more thoughtful duos, they seem to embody the Headless spirit: down but never defeated, conscious but never hectoring, stressed but thankful for the occasional pause of hope.

Headless Heroes would become a treasure for latter-day enthusiasts of 1970s soul, particularly among hip-hop producers. It's a surprisingly durable source text: "Get it together," McDaniels exclaims on the title cut, accidentally birthing a Beastie Boys hit decades later; a shard from the freaky, descending intro of "Lost in the Supermarket" manages to make Quasimoto's "Return of the Loop Digga" seem that much weirder. But Organized Konfusion's "Black Sunday" remains the... most faithful tribute. Prince Po and Pharoahe Monch's bluesy, mournful raps accent the slow, discordant dirges of "Freedom Death Dance" and "Jagger the Dagger." One of hip-hop's more thoughtful duos, they seem to embody the Headless spirit: down but never defeated, conscious but never hectoring, stressed but thankful for the occasional pause of hope.

Headless Heroes might have been McDaniels' perverse, doomsday-paranoid vision, but it was the product of an artistic community its credits include players Miroslav Vitous and Alphonse Mouzon, future jazz-fusion luminaries, and producer Joel Dorn, one of Atlantic's true legends. Often forgotten among them is Headless' musical director and pianist Harry Whitaker, a little-known visionary and frequent collaborator with McDaniels, Flack and Roy Ayers. After Headless, Whitaker continued working with... some of the era's finest jazz musicians though he rarely had the opportunity to record his own material. Here, Whitaker and friends reprise some of his own tunes from the past 35 years. The arrangements are spare and elegant, the playing patient and introspective. It's lifetimes removed from Whitaker's own Headless moment, his explosive, super-righteous 1976 masterpiece Black Renaissance. But it's different on this side of the apocalypse.