Blood Sweat & Tears - House in the Country (1968)

 

Rich here. Virtually all of you will remember Blood, Sweat & Tears and their big hit singles from the late '60s -- "You've Made Me So Very Happy," "Spinnin' Wheel," "And When I Die" -- along with their Grammy Award winning, self-titled album BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS (1969). Aside from their screaming brass section, you also remember their barrel-chested lead singer with the huge bluesy voice, David Clayton-Thomas.

 

What fewer of you may remember is that prior to that album, which was actually their second album, Blood, Sweat & Tears released their visionary debut album, CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN. That version of BS&T was co-created and led by Al Kooper. Yes, THAT Al Kooper -- the Al Kooper who played the distinctive organ on Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" and played with Dylan at Newport when Dylan "went electric;"  the Al Kooper who'd led the highly influential blues band, The Blues Project; the Al Kooper who was the arranger, producer, and organist on the jam-based SUPER SESSION album; the Al Kooper who went on to have a solo career and became a sought-after producer of several highly successful bands of the '70s and '80s.

 

It was that Al Kooper whose idea for adding a big band-styled brass section to a rock band resulted in Blood, Sweat & Tears and ignited the horn band explosion of the late Sixties. And it was Al Kooper who wrote, sang, and arranged many of the songs on the band's debut album CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN, an album full of Kooper's ambitious post-psychedelic blues, rock, jazz, and pop.

 

After, CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN sold poorly, and subsequently, the rest of the band began casting doubts on Al's leadership. For one thing, they didn't didn't think his thin and quirky voice was big enough to be the lead singer for their powerhouse arrangements. But also, there were other members of the band who were better individual musicians than Al, and they wanted their exciting arrangements featured equally.

 

Subsequently, Al quit BS&T, David Clayton-Thomas with his big bluesy voice became the lead singer, and Blood, Swear & Tears became one of the most commercially and artistically successful bands of the late Sixties. But they lost something in the meantime -- the self-effacing pretentiousness, humor, and eccentricity of Al Kooper, as evidenced by "House in the Country" from their debut album:

BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS - "House In The Country"