But there's so much more. Once his star faded, McDaniels wrote the scalding "Compared to What" for Les McCann & Eddie Harris, who cut the definitive version in 1969, and there are plenty of other superb renditions: Della Reese, Ray Charles (a driving, disco-flavored take) and last year's John Legend & the Roots assault.
Even though he was the focal point of a pop music machine with structured arrangements, McDaniels' vocals on such songs as "Tower of Strength" (1961) and "Point of No Return" (1962) seem like an absurd send-up of the macho singing styles of the era. Listening to them now, they're more than entertaining--they're pointed and ahead of their time, just like Bo Diddley's raw and funny approach in the previous decade, although the men sound nothing alike.
McDaniels took that awareness into a new era, first with "Compared to What" ("the president, he's got his war/most folks don't know just what it's for") and especially into Outlaw (Atlantic, 1970--reissued by Water Records), a batch of great songs about militarization, race and gender relations ("she cannot dig machismo/but she really can dig some masculinity"). Needless to say, I want to hear the follow-up to Outlaw, 1971's Headless Heroes of the Apocolypse.
McDaniels went through other name changes (Universal Jones) and drifted into jazz; I last heard new music from him with 2005's Screams and Whispers (Sky Forest), an excellent release that's buried under a mountain of my unfiled stuff. He's on a YouTube video from 2010, singing his biggest hit, "A Hundred Pounds of Clay," in front of a class (Arts In Reach) of teenage girls with Kent Allyn playing guitar and harmonizing behind him. Fifty years later, Eugene McDaniels retained his light and skillful touch.
Around the time of McDaniels' passing, I caught Roberta Flack's "Feel Like Makin' Love" on the car radio. The song was never a favorite, but I listened all the way through for once. Later, I found out that Eugene McDaniels wrote that Number One song. That was when I learned that he died.