Blood, Sweat & Tears: Al Kooper (lead vocals, piano, organ), Fred Lipsius (alto sax, piano), Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss (trumpet, flugelhorn), Dick Halligan (trombone), Steve Katz (guitars), Jim Fielder (bass guitar, fretless bass guitar), Bobby Colomby (drums, percussion) and orchestral ensemble. From the album This Is Father to the Man (1968).
Al Kooper is an American organist, guitarist, singer, pianist, record producer and composer whose career spans nearly 60 years, known for helping Bob Dylan in the recording studios when he started playing electric instruments, co-leading the Blues Project, founding Blood, Sweat & Tears and bringing guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills on the same album. He is considered one of the most important and controversial rock figures of the 1960s. In the 1970s he was also a producer and manager, as well as having a successful solo career. His beginnings came in 1959, at age 14, playing guitar with the rock & roll band the Royal Teens, authors of the small hit “Short Shorts”, and in 1960 he joined Irwin Levine and Bob Brass to write songs. The most popular were “The Diamond Ring” and “I Must Be Seeing Things” recorded in 1965 by Gary Lewis and the Playboys and Gene Pitney respectively.
That same year Kooper met Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village and performed live with him playing the Hammond organ, including at the Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan was criticized for showing up with an electric group. In addition, he took part in Dylan’s albums Highway 61 Revisited from 1965, where he made friends with blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield, with whom he would work for a few years; Blonde on Blonde from 1966 also playing guitar, and Self Portrait and New Morning from 1970.
He was also keyboardist and co-leader with Steve Katz of the Blues Project, which played a mix of electric blues, folk, rock and pop, from 1965 to 1967. Then he thought about creating a kind of music that had ingredients of jazz and rhythm and blues with an orchestral ensemble, and organized Blood, Sweat & Tears. Next the band was hired by Columbia Records and recorded This Is Father to the Man, one of the key albums of the 1960s, but sales were not as expected. So the record company demanded the group to follow a more commercial approach and Kooper had to leave, although as compensation he was offered a job as a producer and talent scout.
© Columbia Records
