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, as Jerry puts it, "legitimate for a white boy to get up there and sing," so Jerry formed a new band, The Orfuns, and became a lead singer in addition to carrying the lead on guitar. The Orfuns were, undeniably, the most popular band in South San Diego, and the band was one of the important influences in a burgeoning original music scene in San Diego in the 60's.

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 amazing original songs written by Jerry, who by now had a reputation for living and playing on the edge, despite his youth, but, in 1967, 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. Drew Gallahar (bass/vocals), Cliff Lenx (organ/vocals), and Danny Orlino (guitar) had been members of The Centaurs, a popular mid-60's San Diego band, contemporaries of The Orfuns. After splintering themselves in 1967, The Centaurs brought in Carl Spiron on drums, followed shortly after by Jerry, creating arguably the most talented line-up of musicians in Southern California at the time. The Centaurs had been a hot dance band, known as excellent singers and musicians, but they were strictly a cover band. Other members of the band acknowledge that bringing Jerry into the band was 'Step One' in a master plan to make The Centaurs and original, marketable rock band, but they hadn't counted on fervor of Jerry's resolve to do just that. Jerry quickly established himself as the creative focus of the band, which he subsequently re-christened Framework.

Understandably, there was an underlying tension in Framework that never totally dissipated, and Jerry never felt completely supported by the group; so in late 1968 Drew Gallahar was replaced with Terry Fann, a fearless musician who could sing, play, and write music. The new version of the five-piece Framework only lasted a couple of weeks before the "power trio" idea was discussed. "Terry took us to the next level," remembers Carl Spiron. "And he was the first bass player I ever saw that played with his fingers, not a pick! It's a very different sound, very fat and expressive. It really allowed Jerry to cut loose on the guitar without leaving the rhythm sounding thin." 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. As Jerry remembers, "We must have played every college and high school gig in the county."

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 60's. 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, where, in the mid seventies, he remembers hearing the demo tape of a band called Queen. Primitively mixed and recorded, the group sounded "like a Led Zeppelin copy" and Jerry was convinced that they would never make it. 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. The crowd went nuts, and 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 delight audiences throughout San Diego County.