In 1969. Atlantic Records released Swiss Movement, a recording of McCann with regular collaborator and saxophonist Eddie Harris and guest trumpeter Benny Bailey at that year's Montreux Jazz Festival. The album contained the song "Compared To What," and both the album and the single were huge Billboard pop chart successes. "Compared To What" featured political criticism of the Vietnam War:

The President, he's got his war,

Folks don't know just what it's for.

Nobody gives us rhyme or reason,

Have one doubt, they call it treason.

(The song was not actually written by McCann; fellow Atlantic composer/artist Eugene McDaniels wrote it years earlier.)

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