The tall, fit figure of Eugene McDaniels walks into Sakura. Taking off the leather and snakeskin jacket he wore on his motorcycle ride here, McDaniels sits down and greets every single person-the chefs, the waitresses-asking after their kids and families, before we get down to the serious business of eating sushi.

McDaniels' bald head and gray beard only hint at his age: 69 going on 30. He takes a karate class three times a week, but he's also in physical therapy for a rotator cuff injury. "Tore that bad boy almost completely off," he says, showing me the scar on his right shoulder, as he explains that he hurt it in a fit of travel frustration by yanking too hard at his own luggage. "Anger is not a good place for me," states McDaniels in his deep, sonorous voice. "It never has been. That's why you rarely will ever see me angry."

Thirty years after he released his last album, we still hear McDaniels every day. His early R&B hits like "One Hundred Pounds of Clay" and "Tower of Strength" have stayed in rotation on oldies radio. The radical funk and soul albums that he recorded in the early '70s became crate-digger totems, sampled by hip-hop artists from A Tribe Called Quest to Gravediggaz. And remember that Coke ad last year, where Mya and Common hawked soda by singing about what's "real"? They were butchering "Compared to What," the jazz-pop standard that McDaniels wrote for his friend Les McCann.

And now McDaniels, who has lived on the Seacoast for over a decade, has recorded a new album that tries to connect all those threads. After all these years, McDaniels is singing again.

The son of a Pentecostal minister in Omaha, McDaniels grew up around music-gospel, which led him to form a gospel quartet at age 11 called Echoes of Joy, but also jazz, which he soaked up from the radio. McDaniels showed his talent early: on the strength of his bold voice and four-octave range he left Omaha by age 18 to pursue a career, sleeping in the New York basement of bluesman Wynonie Harris, singing backup for Helen Merrill, and touring the country with an a capella group called the Mississippi Piney Woods Singers.

But as soon as he got on the road, McDaniels took the chance to pursue his passion for jazz. McDaniels recalls, "At night after we did schools and stuff I'd go call up all the hotels and ask where the best jazz was. And then I'd sneak in, sit and listen for a while and then ask the guy, 'I'd like to sit in.'"

As a pop singer, he got some breaks and missed others. At age 15, he had an invitation to join Sam Cooke's Soul Stirrers, but his father decided he should stay in school instead of hitting the road; later, when he made it to San Francisco, he almost landed legendary manager Helen Noga, but she stayed with Johnny Mathis. After that, he made his way down to Los Angeles, where he settled for a while-aside from a detour back to Omaha, where he had been called up for the draft.

"I knew if I went to Korea, the end of every conflict is where people die," says McDaniels. "And so I just figured I wasn't coming back, so I got married to this very beautiful black lady from Seattle, Washington." But for some reason that McDaniels never learned, the military rejected him-"And there I was, not accepted, and married." With the war averted, and his first wife and mother in tow, McDaniels headed back to Los Angeles.

"I was either 23 or 24 when I had my first hit. But in the meantime, I was working with these jazz musicians. Les McCann and I were working together 85 having a blast, earning about $50 apiece a week," recalls McDaniels.

"Marlon Brando used to come in, take us up to his house, show us rushes from his new movies and stuff. And then one night we went up there and Brando put on some porn, and Les McCann started laughing, he says, 'Marlon Brando, you a nasty motherfucker!' Out loud! He had this small theater in his house. He says, 'Man, I lost all respect for you!' He says this out loud, man! Like, oh my God. You can't talk to Marlon Brando like that."

In the early '60s McDaniels also recorded a string of records for Liberty, including three that went gold. McDaniels was firmly under contract and couldn't pick, write or produce his material, and he has distanced himself from "fluff" like "Chip Chip" and "One Hundred Pounds of Clay." As he puts it, "My recordings didn't have anything to do with my music." But listening to these early singles, you can hear his magnificently expressive voice. On Burt Bachrach's "Tower of Strength," he howls his regret that he can't just give his girl the cold shoulder, and barks taunts at her about how she'd come back on her knees, if he just had the guts to send her away.

"The '60s was my 20s. And that was my age of discovery. I mean I learned about the world, about music, the music world also, and the world of philosophy and religions other than my father's religion." McDaniels led a charmed life, meeting Elvis Presley, taking the mike from Frank Sinatra, testing out the high life without being abused by it. He swears he wasn't a saint, but his better nature kept him out of trouble. "I've always been not afraid. I mean, I went to Tijuana, Mexico, when I was 19 or 20. By myself. Didn't know a soul, didn't have anybody with me, just down there looking to get laid. And I met the grandest young woman-that was before I was married-grandest young woman, man, what an outstanding person. I met her family, and we turned out to be friends. And I didn't get lucky," says McDaniels, laughing. "I'm the son of a minister, and as soon as I got past the object part of being a woman, you know, then I started caring about what happened. Morals are underrated."

By the mid '60s, McDaniels had left Liberty but he kept up his jazz singing, opening for Miles Davis and jamming with Cannonball Adderly and the Modern Jazz Quartet; he also discovered rock music, particularly Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. He brought politics into his music when he criticized the Vietnam war and the president in "Compared to What," and after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., he took off for Europe-"I just needed to see our country from outside the country"-and only decided to come back when, on some street in Scandinavia, a total stranger approached him to tell him that John Coltrane had just died.

On the two records he made for Atlantic, Outlaw in 1970 and Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse in 1971, McDaniels is a different artist. For the first time, he wrote the material, chose the format and tapped his jazz and rock friends for the studio. But he was also still in transition. You recognize the expressive growls and self-aware joshing that had snuck into his pop singles, but the soaring proclamations sound almost out of place over folk-rock guitars. He roughens it up for lines like, "She's a nigger in jeans/She's an outlaw, she don't wear a bra"; he's cramming his skill into a genre that didn't ask for it. But if the Mick Jagger-influenced growls he affects hadn't settled in, McDaniels still soared and chilled. The declarations of "Love Letter to America" could have carried across the National Mall, and Headless Heroes ended with a primal scream: expression broke free of technique.

"(I made) Outlaws, and Headless Heroes, and worked on expressing how I really felt about the place of my birth, you know. What it meant to me. And what it means to me is that we're a nation of misfits, and castoffs, and ex-slaves, ex-convicts. I mean, it's a serious thing. To expect us to be able to rise to a spiritual height from such heavyweight beginnings."

The session players on those albums have cemented their legacy. The folk-rock band on Outlaw featured the guitars of Hugh McCracken and Eric Weissberg, with Ron Carter on bass and Mother Hen on the keys. And Headless Heroes earned its place as a classic source of hip-hop breaks with its soul and jazz band, led by Harry Whitaker's electric piano, with Gary King on electric bass, Weather Report's Miroslav Vitous on upright and Alphonse Mouzon on drums.

From Outlaw, the song "Reverend Lee" has been covered by everyone from Herbie Mann to Roberta Flack to, recently, Natalie Cole. The pantingly erotic story about the temptation of a minister was easier to translate than the political lyrics of the rest of the album, which take on the suffering of the Native Americans, the hippie slums of New York City, and the war dead in Arlington Cemetery. McDaniels became more prophetic on Headless Heroes, but he also worked on a human scale: "Supermarket Blues" is a story of frustration, that a black man can't even return a can of peas without getting beaten by the pigs, but it's told with fed-up humor. The armed hippies on the cover of Outlaw were a red herring. In McDaniels' music, peace was the answer, and he didn't take sides in the wars between the "Jews and the Arabs" or the "niggers and crackers": he wanted everyone to know that they were being used.

McDaniels' new direction was perfect for the radical tone of '70s funk-and then it all went wrong. Headless Heroes was pulled from the shelves, and Atlantic stopped all promotion of the album. Outside of underground radio, nobody would touch it. Producer Joel Dorn has said that the album was killed by no less than Spiro Agnew, who called from the White House to demand that Atlantic abandon it; this writer did not try to confirm or deny that story, but suffice it to say that Atlantic didn't want to support an album that threatened that the Lord was coming back to smite the mighty for abusing the meek.

It was an almost-fatal blow to his career. Although McDaniels continued to write hits for Atlantic-most notably Roberta Flack's "Feel Like Makin' Love"-he slowly stopped singing, in the studio or in clubs. He recorded and toured with Leon Pendarvis, best known from Saturday Night Live, in the band Universal Jones in 1972, but the last record he made was in the '80s, a one-day jazz session where Herbie Hancock, Jack DeJohnette and Miroslav Vitous sat in gratis. Somebody stole the tape, and the recording has never been heard.

McDaniels has more to say. His message is clear: he sticks to the left side of politics, hence his self-given title, "The Left Rev. McDaniels," and he's supporting Kerry in the election this year. Talking to him, McDaniels can sound like a full-blooded hippie who believes that love and honesty about our true natures will turn the world around. But right when you think he's oversimplifying things, that his lyrics are too blunt, or that he believes less cynically than the rest of us in the ideals of the 's, you remember the frustrations he's endured in his own life, and the fury behind all those apocalyptic visions. Today, he cares as much as ever-just mention discrimination of any kind, or ask him what he thinks of Clinton being impeached for a blow job when Bush can keep up his war in Iraq-but he keeps an even keel. You don't get to 70 without learning how to live with things.

His work isn't done. In all his years, he's rarely had a clear shot at getting his ideas out there. "I know that Hendrix, Monk, Miles, (their music) was a contribution. I cannot know that about myself," says McDaniels. "My career was more sporadic."

And so he still looks for a way to make a difference. He's working on a Web site, www.genepoolentertainment.com, that will serve as a record label, an online store, and an outlet for publishing his ideas. "I know with this Web site I can make a contribution."

Best of all, McDaniels is making music again. He never completely left the business: since the early '80s, he's worked regularly with the singer Carri Coltrane (who took that stage name in honor of John), producing and writing material for her albums.

Coltrane recalls meeting McDaniels when they both lived in Seattle. She had heard that he'd moved to the area, but finally met him when they landed in the same ballet class. ("You should see him do a pirouette," says Coltrane. "It's something to behold.") McDaniels eventually followed her to New England in 1990-she lives in Greenland, he's right over the border in Maine-and her support and production assistance were instrumental in finishing McDaniels' new album.

Asked why McDaniels chose this time to record, Coltrane recalls him telling her, "'Sis, I'm getting old, you know, I'm getting up there.' You met him, hello! But he is going to turn 70."

McDaniels got back in shape by vocalizing around the house, and struggling in the studio-"And just something clicked and bam, there was a performance." Coltrane co-produced the album, and McDaniels brought some of his closest friends in for some sessions, including saxman Matt Langley and arranger and keyboardist Ted Brancato. Along with his own songs, he uses compositions and beats by his sons Mateo and Django, and he gives a track to his latest discovery, Leyna, a new, younger singer he wants to propel to stardom.

After a year and a half he has over 20 songs in the can, and 12 made it onto the album, titled Screams and Whispers. McDaniels expects to self-release it, on Sept. 16, while he looks for the right label deal. The album sounds sharp and contemporary, with blues, jazz and pop tracks bumping against each other without clashing. The lyrics get political but with more humor and less rage, and he's especially compelling on the gorgeous contemporary jazz ballad "Nuclear Dancing."

But the greatest surprise is to hear McDaniels' voice-deeper and richer, as proficient as it was 30 or even 40 years ago, more self-possessed than on his earliest hits, and more natural than his transitional phase for Atlantic. The Left Rev. McD has rarely sung more naturally or beautifully than in these sessions. Maybe for the first time, he's found his complete voice.

Screams and Whispers is a summation of his career, but of course, for the soon-to-be 70-year-old McDaniels, it's also the next step-a way to get back into music, even as he keeps up with his karate class, and works on his screenwriting career, and spends time with his family. And as we were wrapping up the best sushi dinner I've ever had, he leaned over and hit me with his latest idea: "If there's a really good rock and roll band, I mean, somebody who really swings hard, and they need a vocalist? I'm up for it."