Album Reviews

The first Blood, Sweat and Tears group led by Al Kooper and including his former Blues Project bandmate Steve Katz, was the sophisticated assemblage that produced but one album. This one.

The first Blood, Sweat and Tears group led by Al Kooper and including his former Blues Project bandmate Steve Katz, was the sophisticated assemblage that produced but one album. This one.

It remains a stunning example of jazz-rock sophistication that has never been matched in my opinion by any of the follow-up horn bands like Chicago or Mom’s Apple Pie (just kidding) and certainly not by the David Clayton Thomas led BS&T, though that one was far more commercially successful and though it included five of the original crew that perform here, Randy Brecker left and Al Kooper was only involved on two tracks.

Some may still dig “Spinning Wheel,” the great reworking of Traffic’s “Smiling Phases,” and the rest of the second album, and I have to admit that for pop dross it’s awfully good (though the passage of time really exposes David Clayton Thomas as little more than a facile lounge singer), but if that’s where you got to know the group and are either afraid to dig further back, or wonder whether this record can possibly live up to that one, have no fear.

Everything about this production reeks of quality— from John Simon’s producer credit to Fred Catero’s engineering and the BS&T string section made up of N.Y.C.’s best ‘60s session men that included Harry Lookofsky, whose son wrote “Walk Away Renee” for his group The Left Banke. The playing is suave and the arrangements sophisticated.

The smartly chosen covers are Tim Buckley’s “Morning Glory,” Goffin-King’s “So Much Love,” Harry Nilsson’s suave and deboner “Without Her” done as a bossa-nova and Randy Newman’s “Just One Smile.” But better than the covers are the dark blues/funk originals from Kooper among which are “I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know,” “My Days Are Numbered” and “I Can’t Quit Her.”

The A&R work produced a dark album. Perhaps that’s why the album is sprinkled with unnecessary “humor” that detracted some when the album was first released and detracts more now. Fortunately there’s not much of it, but it includes manic cackling behind Al Kooper’s lovely “Overture” and a “zany” “House in the Country” by Kooper that has its compositional strengths and sketch-like weaknesses.

I remember buying this album upon its initial release. I’d gone down to New York to visit friends and stopped in at Sam Goody’s. The bizarre cover got me and then I noticed it was Kooper and Katz from The Blues Project and I bit. I also bought Steppenwolf’s debut for the aluminum foil cover before I’d heard “Born to Be Wild,” and The Moody Blues’ Days of Future Past again, just because the cover looked cool and what was on the back was so damn pretentious and ambitious.

Anyway, the original “360 Sound” edition of this record sounds fantastic. It’s a high quality Columbia studio recording, with vivid harmonics, impressive transparency and dynamics, shimmering highs and tight extended bass. The soundstage is expansive and the images tightly presented.

I’m not sure it can get much better than the original given how well-pressed Columbia records were in those days, especially if you have a clean original. That said, unlike the second BS&T album this one wasn’t all that popular so I’m not sure what’s out there in the used market. There are two reissues of this. One is from Sundazed and there’s a far more expensive one from Speakers Corner. The duplication that’s currently underway between domestic and overseas pressings seems to be growing as vinyl gains popularity and it confuses the marketplace.

The Speakers Corner reissue, which uses the wrong label art is pressed at Pallas and consequently it’s quieter and better finished overall. However, the Sundazed copy I got was very well finished and reasonably quiet, but not as quiet.

On the other hand the Speakers Corner version was somewhat more hyped up at the frequency extremes and cut somewhat hotter, but not objectionably so. The Sundazed sounds somewhat closer to the original overall, so for half the price, you do the math!