Jerry McCann

Jerry McCann has been playing music professionally since he started his first band in junior high. The Tridents specialized in rhythm-and-blues, soul, and later on, surf music. There was no regular singer, but sometimes singers would sit in if the pay was right. Jerry played with The Tridents up through his early high school years, when the success of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones made it, Jerry formed a new band, The Orfuns, and became a lead singer in addition to carrying the lead on guitar. The Orfuns played their way into an option agreement with White Whale Records in Los Angeles, and several demos the band submitted to the label in 1965 nearly got them a record contract. They had a handful of original songs written by Jerry. When White Whale declined to pick-up their option and offer them a contract, the band broke up. After the breakup of The Orfuns, Jerry joined with four other popular musicians to form Framework including members of The Centaurs, a mid-60s San Diego band, contemporaries of The Orfuns. Framework recorded several successful singles and one complete album, and they were a stable live performance group in San Diego, opening concerts at the old Sand Diego stadium for such names as The Birds, Frank Zappa, The Moody Blues, Poco, Chicago, Steve Miller, Santana, and The Grateful Dead. In 1971, Jerry moved to San Francisco, where he released an album on Elektra with a group of musicians with whom he had done a couple of gigs in the mid 60s. The album caused some legal wrangles with the record company, who was not quite ready for an album called "Formerly Anthrax." The band's sound was quite different from that of Framework, a jazz-rock sound with classical overtones that wasn't easily danceable. Jerry remembers that the most frequent comment he heard from listeners about the new sound was, "Interesting." In 1972, Jerry left San Francisco and the crew of Formerly Anthrax and took a job in Los Angeles with Elektra. Shortly after that, Jerry returned to the San Diego area with the intention of getting out the biz. After only a few weeks off, however, he was talked into sitting-in with some friends who had a regular gig at the The Albatross. Jerry was added as a regular member of than band, which was called Nova. Shortly after that, Jerry decided that he would rather play under his own name. He has been playing as The Jerry McCann Band ever since and continues to regularly perform live throughout San Diego County.