Blood, Sweat & Tears
Blood, Sweat & Tears (also known as "BS&T") is an American jazz rock music group founded in New York City in 1967, noted for a combination of brass with rock instrumentation. BS&T has gone through numerous iterations with varying personnel and has encompassed a wide range of musical styles. Their sound has merged rock, pop and R&B/soul music with big band jazz.
This article is about the band. For other uses, see Blood, Sweat & Tears (disambiguation).
Blood, Sweat & Tears
New York, U.S.
1967–1981, 1984–present
- Brad Mason
- Ravi Best
- Keith Paluso
- Adam Klipple
- Dylan Elise
- Ken Gioffre
- Ric Fierabracci
- Nir Felder
- Ozzie Melendez
The group's self-titled second album spent seven weeks atop the U.S. charts in 1969 and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1970. It contained the hit recordings "And When I Die", "You've Made Me So Very Happy", and "Spinning Wheel".[1] All of these peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100. The follow-up album, Blood, Sweat & Tears 3, also reached number one in the U.S.
In addition to original music, the group is known for arrangements of popular songs by Laura Nyro, James Taylor, Carole King, the Band, the Rolling Stones, Billie Holiday and many others. The group has also adapted music from Erik Satie, Thelonious Monk and Sergei Prokofiev into their arrangements.
The group was inspired by the "brass-rock" of the Buckinghams and their producer, James William Guercio, as well as the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra.[2] BS&T's success paralleled that of similarly configured ensembles such as Chicago and the Electric Flag, but by the mid-1970s the group's popularity had declined.[3]
Al Kooper era[edit]
Al Kooper (keyboards, vocals), Bobby Colomby (drums), Steve Katz (guitar, vocals), and Jim Fielder (bass) played at the Village Theatre (later renamed Fillmore East) in New York City on September 16, 1967, with James Cotton Blues Band opening. Kooper was the initial singer and musical director, having insisted on that position based on his work with the Blues Project, his previous band with Katz.[1]
Fred Lipsius (alto sax, piano) joined the others a month later. A few more shows were played before Lipsius recruited horn players Dick Halligan, Randy Brecker, and Jerry Weiss. The octet debuted at the Cafe Au Go Go on November 17–19, 1967, then played The Scene the following week. Audiences were impressed with the innovative fusion of contemporary styles. After signing to Columbia Records, the group released Child Is Father to the Man which reached number 47 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart in the United States.
Artistic differences quickly developed. Colomby and Katz wanted to hire a stronger lead vocalist. This led to the departure of Kooper in April 1968.[3] Prior to leaving Kooper had already arranged some songs that would be on the second BS&T album.[4][5] He was soon hired as a record producer at Columbia. Trumpeters Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss also left and were replaced by Lew Soloff and Chuck Winfield.[1] Brecker joined Horace Silver's band. Jerry Weiss went on to start the similarly styled group Ambergris.
David Clayton-Thomas era[edit]
Colomby and Katz looked for a new vocalist and considered Alex Chilton,[6] Stephen Stills, and Laura Nyro, before deciding on David Clayton-Thomas, a Canadian from Toronto. Trombonist Halligan moved to organ and Jerry Hyman was added on trombone. The new nine-member band debuted at New York's Cafe Au Go Go on June 18, 1968, beginning a two-week residency.
The self-titled second album, Blood, Sweat & Tears, was produced by Guercio and much of the album was arranged by Lipsius. It featured fewer original songs but greater chart success. It included Nyro's "And When I Die", "You've Made Me So Very Happy" by Berry Gordy and Brenda Holloway, and Clayton-Thomas' "Spinning Wheel". The band enjoyed headliner status at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969.[3] A film crew caught a few songs, but the band's manager Bennett Glotzer ordered the crew to turn off the cameras and leave the stage since the band had not agreed nor been paid for filming.
The band went on a United States Department of State-sponsored tour of Eastern Europe in May/June 1970.[3] Voluntary association with the U.S. government was highly unpopular with "underground" rock fans at the time, some of whom engaged in radical politics. The band was criticized for allowing itself to be co-opted.[3] It is now known that the State Department subtly pressured the group into the tour in exchange for a U.S. residency permit to Clayton-Thomas,[3] who had a criminal record in Canada, and had been deported from the U.S. after overstaying his visa.[7] The tour and its aftermath is the focus of a 2023 feature-length documentary titled "What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?"[8]
After returning to the U.S., the group released Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 in June 1970, produced by Roy Halee and Colomby. The album was another success,[3] spawning hit singles with Carole King's "Hi-De-Ho" and another Clayton-Thomas composition, "Lucretia MacEvil". The group recreated the formula with more arrangements by Lipsius. Reviews sometimes focused solely upon the band's work with the U.S. State Department, without discussing the music.[3] Compounding the image problem was a decision to play a lucrative engagement at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip. This was unpopular with young underground rock fans who identified Las Vegas entertainers with the music of their parents' generation.
In late 1970, the band produced soundtrack music for the film comedy The Owl and the Pussycat , which starred Barbra Streisand and George Segal.
The group reconvened in San Francisco in January 1971 with jazz writer/saxophonist Don Heckman serving as producer. With Dave Bargeron replacing Jerry Hyman, they recorded the fourth album, BS&T 4, released in June 1971. Notable tracks included David Clayton-Thomas' "Go Down Gamblin'" and Al Kooper's "Holy John (John the Baptist)". BS&T 4 earned the group a gold record, however, none of the singles reached the Top 30. During this period the group's popular and commercial success began to decline.[3]
After a final show at Anaheim Convention Center on December 31, 1971, Clayton-Thomas left in early January 1972 to pursue a solo career. Columbia issued a Greatest Hits album in February 1972. This album contained edited single versions of some songs, rather than the full-length album versions. It earned a gold record award in the US, the last BS&T album to do so.