onsdag 14 februari 2018

Blood, Sweat & Tears - Child is Father to The Man (1st Album US 1968)


260:- (24-Bit Limited Remaster Edition. Gruppens 1:a album inklusive Al Kooper. 3 bonuslåtar ingår i denna utgåva.)

Child Is Father to the Man is the debut album by Blood, Sweat & Tears, released in February 1968. It reached number 47 on Billboard's (North America) Pop Albums chart.


Widely regarded as a classic fusion of jazz, rock and roll, psychedelia and classical music, Child Is Father to the Man is one of bandleader Al Kooper's most enduring works. The album introduced the idea of the big band to rock and roll and paved the way for such groups as Chicago. Kooper left the band after this album, changing the nature of the group.

The title is a quotation from a similarly titled poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, slightly misquoting a poem by William Wordsworth called "My Heart Leaps Up".

Blood, Sweat & Tears (also known as "BS&T") is a contemporary jazz-rock American music group, active throughout the later part of the 20th century and still into the 21st. They are well known for their music throughout the late 1960s to early 1970's, and they were well known for their combination of brass and rock band instrumentation. 

It recorded songs by noted rock/folk songwriters such as Laura Nyro, James Taylor, The Band, the Rolling Stones, as well as Billie Holiday, and Erik Satie. They incorporated music from Thelonious Monk and Sergei Prokofiev into their arrangements.

They were originally formed in 1967 in New York City. Since their beginnings in 1967, the band has gone through numerous iterations with varying personnel and has encompassed a multitude of musical styles. What the band is most known for, from its start, is the fusing of rock, blues, pop music, horn arrangements and jazz improvisation into a hybrid that came to be known as "jazz-rock". Unlike "jazz fusion" bands, which tend toward virtuostic displays of instrumental facility and some experimentation with electric instruments, the songs of Blood, Sweat & Tears merged the stylings of rock, pop and R&B/soul music with big band, while also adding elements of 20th Century Classical and small combo jazz traditions.

The Al Kooper era:
Al Kooper, Jim Fielder, Fred Lipsius, Randy Brecker, Jerry Weiss, Dick Halligan, Steve Katz and Bobby Colomby formed the original band. The creation of the group was inspired by the "brass-rock" ideas of The Buckinghams and its producer, James William Guercio, as well as the early 1960s Roulette-era Maynard Ferguson Orchestra (according to Kooper's autobiography).

Al Kooper named the band "Blood, Sweat & Tears" after Johnny Cash's 1963 album Blood, Sweat and Tears. Kooper was the group's initial bandleader, having insisted on that position based on his experiences with The Blues Project, his previous band with Steve Katz, which had been organized as an egalitarian collective. Jim Fielder was from Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention and had played briefly with Buffalo Springfield. Kooper's fame as a high-profile contributor to various historic sessions of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and others was a catalyst for the prominent debut of Blood, Sweat & Tears in the musical counterculture of the mid-sixties.

Al, Bobby, Steve & Jim did a few shows as a quartet at the Cafe Au Go Go in New York City in September 1967, opening for Moby Grape. Fred Lipsius then joined the others two months later. A few more shows were played as a quintet, including one at the Fillmore East in New York. Lipsius then recruited the other three, who were New York jazz horn players he knew. The final lineup debuted at the Cafe Au Go Go on November 17–19, 1967, then moved over to play The Scene the following week. 

The band was a hit with the audience, who liked the innovative fusion of jazz with acid rock and psychedelia. After signing to Columbia Records, the group released perhaps one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the late 1960s, Child Is Father to the Man, featuring the Harry Nilsson song, "Without Her", and perhaps Kooper's most memorable blues number, "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know". 

The album cover was considered quite innovative showing the band members sitting and standing with child-sized versions of themselves. Characterized by Kooper's penchant for studio gimmickry, the album slowly picked up in sales amidst growing artistic differences between the founding members. Colomby and Katz wanted to move Kooper exclusively to keyboard and composing duties, while hiring a stronger vocalist for the group.

The music of Blood, Sweat & Tears slowly achieved commercial success alongside similarly configured ensembles such as Chicago and the Electric Flag. Kooper was forced out of the group in April 1968 and became a record producer for the Columbia label, but not before arranging some songs that would be on the next BS&T album. The group's trumpeters, Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss, also left after the album was released, and were replaced by Lew Soloff and Chuck Winfield. Brecker joined Horace Silver's band with his brother Michael, and together they eventually formed their own horn-dominated musical outfits, Dreams and The Brecker Brothers. Jerry Weiss went on to start the similarly-styled group Ambergris.

Personnel:
» Randy Brecker – trumpet, flugelhorn 
» Bobby Colomby – drums, percussion, vocals 
» Jim Fielder – bass guitar, fretless bass guitar 
» Dick Halligan – trombone 
» Steve Katz – guitar, lute, vocals 
» Al Kooper – organ, piano, ondioline, vocals 
» Fred Lipsius – piano, alto saxophone 
» Jerry Weiss – trumpet, flugelhorn, vocals

01. "Overture" (Kooper) – 1:32 
02. "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" (Kooper) – 5:57 
03. "Morning Glory" (Larry Beckett, Tim Buckley) – 4:16 
04. "My Days Are Numbered" (Kooper) – 3:19 
05. "Without Her" (Harry Nilsson) – 2:41 
06. "Just One Smile" (Randy Newman) – 4:38 
07. "I Can't Quit Her" (Kooper, Irwin Levine) – 3:38 
08. "Meagan's Gypsy Eyes" (Steve Katz) – 3:24 
09. "Somethin' Goin' On" (Kooper) – 8:00 
10. "House in the Country" (Kooper) – 3:04 
11. "The Modern Adventures of Plato, Diogenes and Freud" (Kooper) – 4:12 
12. "So Much Love"/"Underture" (Gerry Goffin, Carole King) – 4:47 

Bonus:
13. "Refugee from Yuhupitz (Instrumental)" [demo version - mono] (Kooper) – (3:44) 
14. "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" [demo version - mono] (Kooper) – (6:10) 
15. "The Modern Adventures of Plato, Diogenes and Freud" [demo version - mono] (Kooper) – (5:03)