Artist: Blood Sweat and Tears Genre(s):
Rock
Pop
Jazz
Other
Discography:
The Definitive Collection Year: 2003
Tracks: 17
Super Hits Year: 2000
Tracks: 10
Raw Breed Year: 1997
Tracks: 20
Blood, Sweat and Tears 3 Year: 1990
Tracks: 10
Brand New Day Year: 1977
Tracks: 12
New City Year: 1975
Tracks: 10
New Blood Year: 1972
Tracks: 8
Greatest Hits Year: 1972
Tracks: 11
4 Year: 1971
Tracks: 12
Blood, Sweat and Tears Year: 1969
Tracks: 10
Child Is Father To The Man Year: 1968
Tracks: 12
Live and Improvised - Disc Two Year:
Tracks: 6
Live and Improvised - Disc One Year:
Tracks: 7
No late-'60s American radical of all time started with as much melodic promise as Blood, Sweat & Tears, or completed their electric potential more than to the full -- and then blew it all in a series of internal conflicts and fantastic life history moves. It could almost sound shady, talk about a grouping that sold close to six gazillion records in tierce years and then wasted all of that momentum. Then once again, considering that none of the foundation members ever intended to work together, peradventure the mathematical group was "lucky" later on a fashion.
The roots of Blood, Sweat & Tears put down in unmatchable weekend of hastily assembled golf club shows in New York in July 1967. Al Kooper (born February 5, 1944, Brooklyn, NY) was an ex-member of the Blues Project, in motive of money and a tonic bug out in music. He'd been flirting with the notion, ontogenesis out of his admiration for malarkey bandleader Maynard Ferguson, of forming an electric tilt band that would use horns as much as guitarists, and malarkey as practically as john Rock as the base for their music. As he later related, he sawing machine the proposed group approach down somewhere midway 'tween James Brown's Famous Flames and the Count Basie Orchestra. Kooper hoped to upgrade sufficiency john Cash to get to London (where he would put such a band together) through a series of gigs involving some big-name friends in New York. When the smoking exculpated, thither wasn't enough to flummox him to London, but the gig itself produced a core group group of players world Health Organization were interested in operative with him: Jim Fielder (born October 4, 1947, Denton, TX), late of Buffalo Springfield, on bass, whom Kooper brought in from California; Kooper's late Blues Project bandmate, guitar player Steve Katz (born May 9, 1945, Brooklyn, NY); and drummer Bobby Colomby (born December 20, 1944, New York, NY), with whom Katz had been hanging out and also talk about starting a radical. Kooper in agreement, as tenacious as he was in charge musically -- having just get along sour of the Blues Project, who'd been organized as a finish cooperative and fundamentally voted themselves out of beingness, he was only prepared to bedevil into some other striation if he were vocation the shots. This became the radical that Kooper had pictured; it would feature a horn section that would be as out front end as Kooper's keyboards or Katz's guitar. Colomby brought in alto saxman Fred Lipsius (born November 19, 1944, New York, NY), a longtime personal idol, and from at that place the batting order grew, with Randy Brecker (born November 27, 1945, Philadelphia, PA) and Jerry Weiss (born May 1, 1946, New York, NY) connection on yellow pitcher plant and flügelhorns, and Dick Halligan (born August 29, 1943, Troy, NY) playing trombone. The young grouping was signed to Columbia Records, and the name Blood, Sweat & Tears came to Kooper in the awake of an after-hours jam at the Cafe au Go Go, where he'd played with a cut on his hand that had leftfield his hammond organ keyboard covered in blood.
The original Blood, Sweat & Tears turned out to be one of the superlative groups that the sixties ever produced. Their sound, in contrast to R&B outfits that only victimised motor horn sections for embroidery and accompaniment, was a true loanblend of john Rock and jazz, with a strong element of soulfulness as the soldering agent that held it together; Lipsius, Brecker, Weiss, and Halligan didn't just regorge along on the choruses, but played complex, detailed arrangements; Katz played guitar solos as well as round accompaniment, and Kooper's keyboards stirred to the fore along with his telling. Their sound was bold, and it was all new when Blood, Sweat & Tears debuted onstage at the Cafe au Go Go in New York in September 1967, opening for Moby Grape. Audiences at the time were just acquiring used to the psychedelic explosion of the old spring and summer, only they were bowled over by what they heard -- that first adaptation of Blood, Sweat & Tears had elements of psychedelia in their work, but extensive it into realms of wind, R&B, and soul in slipway that had just been heard earlier in one band. The songs were attractive and thought-provoking, and the arrangements gave room for Lipsius, Brecker, and others to solo as well as play rippling ensemble passages, while Kooper's reed organ and Katz's guitar vainglorious in pulse, shimmering glorification. The group's debut album,
Small fry Is Father to the Man, recorded in just iI weeks tardy in 1967 under manufacturer John Simon, was released to positive reviews in February 1968, and it seemed to betoken a outstanding future for all concerned. It remained one of the outstanding albums of its decade, right up there with Bob Dylan's
Highway 61 Revisited and the Rolling Stones'
Beggars Banquet. The only thing it didn't accept, which those other albums did, was a hit unmarried to receive radio play and help drive gross sales.
Child Is Father to the Man was out on that point on its own, invisible to AM radio and the immense majority of the public, awaiting grapevine and any help the still fledgling stone press could apply it, and the band's touring to advertize it.
Even as their debut was organism recorded, withal, elements of discontent had manifested themselves within the group that would sabotage their number one tour and their future. At low gear, these were disagreements or so repertory, which grew into issues of control, and then doubts about Kooper's ability as a lead vocalizer. With Colomby and Katz pickings the lead, the group broached the theme of acquiring a young vocaliser and moving Kooper over alone to playing the organ and composition. By the closing of March 1968, with
Child Is Father to the Man nudging onto the charts and sales edging toward C,000 copies and some momentum finally edifice, Blood, Sweat & Tears blew apart -- Kooper left the lineup, pickings a producer's job at Columbia Records; at that same point in time, Randy Brecker announced his spirit to discontinue. Ironically, at around the same time, Jerry Weiss, who'd actually favorite Kooper's ouster, likewise headed for the door as well, to class the grouping Ambergris?, which lasted long sufficiency to turn off unitary album in 1970.
That might've been the end of their tale, leave off that Bobby Colomby and Steve Katz byword the chance to pull their have band out of this fiasco. Columbia Records decided to stick with them spell Katz and Colomby considered several newfangled singers (including Stephen Stills), and really got as far as auditioning and rehearsing with Laura Nyro before they launch David Clayton-Thomas (born David Thomsett, September 13, 1941, Surrey, England). A Canadian national since the years of v, Clayton-Thomas at the clip was performing with his possess grouping at a small club in New York. He came on board, with Halligan touched over to keyboards, Chuck Winfield (born February 5, 1943, Monessen, PA) and Lew Soloff (born February 20, 1944, Brooklyn, NY) on yellow pitcher plant, and Jerry Hyman (born May 19, 1947, Brooklyn, NY) succeeding Halligan on the trombone. The new nine-member grouping reflected Colomby and Katz's vision of a band, which was heavily influenced by the Buckinghams, a mid-'60s outfit they'd both admired for its mix in of soul influences and their role of horns -- toward that end, they got James William Guercio, wHO had antecedently produced the Buckinghams, as producer for their proposed record album. Though Kooper was done for from Blood, Sweat & Tears, the grouping was forced to rely on a identification number of songs that he'd inclined for the new record album.
The resulting album, simply called
Blood, Sweat & Tears, was issued 11 months afterward
Tiddler Is Father to the Man, in January 1969. Smoother, less challenging, and more traditionally melodious than its predecessor, it was ambitious in an accessible way, starting with its opening runway, an version of French expressionist composer Erik Satie's "Trois Gymnopedies" that transformed the languorous early 20th century classical work into a pop touchstone. Clayton-Thomas was the dominant personality, with Lipsius and the other jazzmen in the band acquiring their spots in the breaks of each song -- every bit important, and sooner more than recounting the singles drawn from the record album were all emended down, abbreviating or removing most of the featured floater for the malarky players. The number one single by the newfangled grouping, "You've Made Me So Very Happy," speedily rosebush to the number two spot on the charts and lofted the album to the cover of the LP listings as well. That was followed by "Spinning Wheel" b/w "More than and More," which also hit number two, which, in turn, was followed by the group's version of Laura Nyro's "And When I Die," some other gold-selling single. When the smoke cleared, that one album had yielded a career's worth of hits in the quad of six months, and the LP had won the Grammy as Album of the Year, selling 3 trillion copies in the buy. So much demand was created for work by Blood, Sweat & Tears that the at once 18-month-old
Tiddler Is Father to the Man, with the different vocaliser and very different intelligent, made the charts anew in the summer and fall of 1969 and earned a atomic number 79 phonograph recording.
The grouping before long faced the problem that every play with a massive success has had to confront -- where do you go from up? By devolve 1969, with 10 months of massive succeeder behind them, the record troupe was tidal bore for a followup record album. The grouping began recording
Line, Sweat & Tears 3 patch the second album was still selling many tens of thousands of copies every week. This clip, the grouping would produce the album themselves, an strange arranging for what was motionless essentially a new mathematical group, simply unrivaled the judge in agreement to, in the wake up of the late album's gross revenue.
And then issues of image and politics entered into the photo. When Al Kooper light-emitting diode the chemical group, in that respect was no doubtfulness of how hip and tuned in Blood, Sweat & Tears were, to the rock candy culture and the counterculture -- by his possess explanation, Kooper was a resident "monstrosity" wherever he went in those days, and they were a boldness sufficiency ensemble to talk for themselves with their music. But the newfangled group's music, and their use of horns, in particular, was more traditional, and it made them a short suspect among rock listeners. "Spinning Wheel," specially, was the kind of song that invited covers by the likes of Mel Tormé and Sammy Davis, Jr., and was the sort of "rock" hit that your parents didn't mind listening. And "You've Made Me So Very Happy," for all of the soul of David Clayton-Thomas' singing, also had a kind of debonaire pop-band edge that made the mathematical group appear closer in spirit to the
Tonight Show banding than, say, to the Rolling Stones.
Combining the precariousness of exactly world Health Organization and what Blood, Sweat & Tears were, and how coolheaded they were, was a conclusion that they made in early 1970, to contract a tour of duty of Eastern Europe on behalf of the U.S. State Department. A few other rock bands had played Eastern Europe in front, just never on behalf of a politics, practically less one that, at that special time, was singularly unpopular with a set of Blood, Sweat & Tears' potential fan base over the war in Vietnam. There was something awfully untimely with this picture in May 1970, simply the chemical group was forgetful to it.
The reasonableness for the tour was a pragmatic one, according to some sources. Clayton-Thomas was a Canadian with selfsame uncertain visa condition in the United States, and the State Department indicated that it would be a draw more agreeable about their singer working here if the ring did them this favor. It was a coup for the governance, acquiring one of the hottest rock 'n' roll acts in the world to represent the government in the Eastern bloc nations -- just it too took place just at the time of the Kent State massacre, in which iV students were shot to death by National Guardsmen, an effect that Nixon chose to capitalize on politically.
And it got worse when they came back, after eyesight the law in Bucharest, in particular, have a tearing hand to any audience spontaneousness; a statement was issued on the group's behalf, upon their come back, trumpeting the virtues of American exemption -- this, one month after Kent State, with the murders of the students soundless an open injury and the extreme right-winger rioting that had ensued in cities like New York (where the police had through with nothing to catch a mob of building workers from attacking anyone with long hair and invading City Hall) soundless fresh in peoples' minds. In June 1970, Blood, Sweat & Tears were the only act hipper than the Johnny Mann Singers putt out feel-good messages about the United States political science.
It was on their return to America, amid these doubtful vocation moves, that
Stock, Sweat & Tears 3 was released. Under the best of conditions, it would have been likewise much to hope that it could match its forerunner, and the truth was that it didn't. Despite some attractive songs, the album never achieved the same shuffle of accessibility and divine guidance displayed by the earlier album. The album shipped gold and topped the LP charts for deuce weeks in mid-1970, and the unmarried "Hi-De-Ho" made it to number 14, only the edge was off and the numbers racket didn't keep soaring week after week as the gross sales of their prior two LPs had. More distressful, the chemical group was starting to get criticized in the rock 'n' roll press, non directly for their State Department tour -- though that couldn't birth made a bunch of reviewers and columnists overly predisposed to go easy on the band -- just over wHO and what they were (and that was where the infamous go did move into into the picture). A lot of rock candy critics felt that Blood, Sweat & Tears were a pretentious bulge group that spattered in horn riffs, piece others argued that they were a jazz outfit trying to kick the bucket as a rock dance band -- either way of life, they weren't "unrivalled of us" or part of wHO we were. Oddly sufficiency, some members of the jazz press liked them, merely that was little aid -- at any time subsequently the early '40s, jazz reviewers in America reached no more than than a little per centum of listeners. And regardless of what the critics aforementioned, a heap of serious jazz listeners wHO were the same years as the bandmembers thought the group was fluff, jazz-lite.
Their ikon problem grew only worse when the group accepted an employment to come along at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas -- the play mecca had never been known as friendly to stream stone acts, and the grouping felt it was doing journeyman military service by opening up Caesar's Palace to performers under 30. Instead, it multiplied their difficulties -- Vegas and what it delineate were near as bad as Nixon. In the meantime, another work, Chicago, produced by James William Guercio, broke large in 1970, likewise on the Columbia label, and avoided all of these pitfalls and internal problems and over up stealth a immense lump of Blood, Sweat & Tears' audience. It seemed as though, after an extraordinary run for of chance, the radical couldn't catch a break; their musical contribution to the Barbra Streisand plastic film
The Owl and the Pussycat did nil to heighten their image. The group's fourth album, begun in early 1971, was the first that ran into real trouble in the making, which showed from the presence of terzetto producers in the credits, and even Kooper was delineate in the songwriting and arranging department.
The fourth album, issued in June 1971, unwell at number tenner on the charts, nowhere near the big top, and none of its singles chapped the Top 30. It was or so this clock time that the membership began shifting and chip. By 1971, the mathematical group was fundamentally divided into three factions, the rock 'n' roll regular recurrence discussion section pitted against the idle words players, and the singer between them both, and no one happy with what anyone else was doing. Clayton-Thomas no yearner enjoyed working with the rest of the band and chose to going later the release of the fourth record album to pursue a solo career.
Despite this loss, the grouping carried on, and the label was uncoerced to carry them a bit longer -- after all,
Blood, Sweat & Tears had sold a lifetime's worth of LPs, and the 2 subsequent albums, though disappointing in its awaken, were good successes by any conventional criterion, and one constantly hopes that lightning volition strike twice. Bob Doyle took the vocalist fleck for a few months, and was so replaced by Jerry Fisher; elsewhere in the card, Fred Lipsius, who'd been thither from the initiate and had put the original horn section unitedly, eventually called it quits and was replaced by Joe Henderson, wHO, in turn, was succeeded by Lou Marini, Jr., and Dick Halligan, who'd replaced Kooper on keyboards after the number one band's dissolution, was succeeded by Larry Willis, spell Steve Katz got a bit guitar player to play sour of in the person of George Wadenius. All of these personnel changes lED to an extended period of inactivity for the band, which Columbia Records made up for by releasing
Blood, Sweat & Tears' Greatest Hits in 1972 -- this was plausibly a small sooner than they mightiness differently receive done it, under ideal circumstances, but the record album became a Top 20 album and earned a amber criminal record prize and was a very pop catalogue item for many days; 1 vantage that its original LP rendering offered the casual fan was that its songs were all the shorter, single edits of their hits, which were otherwise just available on the original 45 revolutions per minute records.
In September 1972, this lineup released an record album, appropriately enough called
New Blood, which never made the Top 30 despite some good moments, accompanied by a single, "So Long Dixie," which didn't crack the Top 40. By this time, they'd turned more toward jazz, recognizing that the rock 'n' roll hearing was slowly drifting out of their reach. Founding members Jim Fielder and Steve Katz called it quits during this flow, Katz preferring to ferment in the more than rock-oriented area of Lou Reed. With replacements aboard, Blood, Sweat & Tears continued performing, merely their following LP, humorously (or was it ominously?) entitled
No Sweat, released in 1973, never rosebush higher than act 72 on the charts, and that was a hit compared to its successor,
Mirror Image, which peaked at number 149. By this time, people were qualifying through the lineup like a revolving door, and regular Jaco Pastorius put in some clock time playing sea bass for the group, all without going much of an impression on the public.
The stopper might've been pulled right around hither, but for the render of Clayton-Thomas, whose solo vocation had fizzled. Now fronting an outfit billed officially as Blood, Sweat & Tears Featuring David Clayton-Thomas, they released a modestly successful comeback album,
New City, in 1975, which -- despite a few lapses in creative thinking and taste, and a range that encompassed Allen Toussant ("Life story") and Randy Newman ("Naked Man," complete with a Mozartian parenthesis) -- featured some of the group's best jazz sides in long time as advantageously as superb performances by Clayton-Thomas. The latter included a rare venture (for this group) into acoustic guitar blues on their rendition of John Lee Hooker's "One Room Country Shack." The resultant single, a adaptation of the Beatles' "Got to Get You Into My Life" (which, peculiarly sufficiency, hoped-for the single release of a remixed interpretation of the British band's own recording) never made the Top 40, but the record album did well enough to justify an ambitious circuit that yielded a double-LP concert album,
Hot and Improvised, that was issued in Europe (and, 15 geezerhood later on, in America). Columbia Records dropped the group in 1976, and a brief association with ABC Records light-emitting diode nowhere. The group was caught betwixt their previous Columbia rivals Chicago, world Health Organization continued to have airplay and chart regularly with new releases, and purer nothingness ensembles such as Return to Forever and Weather Report, world Health Organization had captured the instant in the press and in front the public. In the ending, even Bobby Colomby, world Health Organization had trademarked the group's make selfsame early subsequently Kooper's outlet in 1968, gave up playing in the isthmus, pickings a corporate place at Columbia. Clayton-Thomas has kept the circle alive in the decades since, fronting versatile lineups that cover to perform regularly and record periodically, mostly updated renditions of their classic material.
The coming of the CD geological era, and the tone ending of expanded versions of their first base iI albums, fostered new interest in the group's early history, which was furthered by the nineties button of Kooper's
Soul of a Man, which presented unexampled concert renditions of the 1967-era group's repertory. During the first-class honours degree decade of the 21st century, Wounded Bird Records likewise belatedly reissued the band's post-BST4 albums on CD, with surprising winner --
Unexampled Blood and, regular more so,
Unexampled City, sounded rather good musically, divorced from their origins by virtually 30 age. The radical nominate cadaver active behind Clayton-Thomas, and their recordings through 1972 -- especially the low album -- still extract a powerful response from those millions who've heard them.
