Blood, Sweat & Tears
Blood, Sweat & Tears is the best thing to happen in rock and roll so far in 1968. It is Al Kooper‘s new band, an eight-piece group split in two halves: four men, Al Kooper, Steve Katz, Bobby Colomby and Jim Fielder, in a rhythm section (organ, guitar, drums and bass, respectively) and four men in the horn section, Fred Lipsius, Randy Brecker, Dick Halligan and Jerry Weiss.
For sometime now, musicians have been talking about incorporating horns into their sound —— Butterfield and Bloomfield have already done it — but this is the first time a horn section has been used so strongly, so uniquely and tightly put together.
“I set out to use the horns in an integral way,” says Kooper, the band’s leader. “In addition to just riffing, we had to build a horn section which would be a strong, respected section above and beyond the band. We rehearsed the two parts of the group separately and then tied them together. A lot of the stuff isn’t written; we make it up on the gig. Now we listen to each other so well we can do nearly anything. The instrumentation in the band is very strange even in terms of number of people. Most rock bands don’t use a trombone or an alto sax. I wanted the alto because the alto can cry more than a tenor sax. It screams and cries and the band revolves around that alto sax. The sound and style of the band is the horn section.”
The horns are one of the three primary reasons that Blood, Sweat & Tears is a such a fine, exemplary group. The other two reasons are Kooper himself. He has the gift of an editor in that he can listen for, pick up and use to his own purposes and in his own way any musical bit, any line or melody from any musical form and use it in such a way that it becomes original again and his own.
“My head,” explains Kooper, “is a cache of forty thousand riffs and figures. As opposed to being a virtuoso guitarist or organist, my talent — my virtuosity — is being able to put all those things in place.
“I only play one instrument really the ondioline, a French musical instrument. In order to get anything really valid out of it I had to study Coltrane, literally study like a college course. I had to wash my brain with Coltrane. I’ve played the ondioline on a few records. The best it’s ever sounded is on the last chorus in ‘Meagen’s Gypsy Eyes.’ The in-instrument itself is a little teensy keyboard, with 39 keys, all electric. It only plays one note at a time. The keyboard is suspended like a record changer. If you move it, you get vibrato. Just by pushing switches you get a range of eight octaves. You can’t buy one, though. There are only four in the country. McCartney had one. It’s on ‘Baby, You’re a Rich Man.’ and on ‘Inner Light.’ It sort of sounds like a bagpipe or a soprano sax. The ondioline is my axe. I challenge anybody on it. I’d like to battle McCartney on it. He has used it very well, but his is more Indian based and mine’s thoroughly based on Coltrane.”
An excellent example of where Kooper and Blood, Sweat & Tears is at, is their yet-to-be-recorded single release, “Camille.” Kooper says the origin of the song is in “Le Domino Noir” by Hubert. “The overture to that opera is the music to ‘Camile,’ in other words it’s a steal. I am not very classically oriented, so when I do use something, it’s really far out. I only listen to stuff I can use. This particular classical piece had me strung out for two and a half years and finally I got to use it somewhere.
“I am influenced by many, many things. In this band, the influences are James Brown, Otis Redding, Tim Buckley, the Beatles, the Maynard Ferguson band of five years ago. We owe a lot to that band. There is a lot emulation as opposed to stone copying. The Four Tops and Percy Sledge are also my influences that are tied to the band. So are Ray Charles and Elizabeth Cotton.”
Kooper’s other talents are for composition and arranging. Some of the songs the band has recorded are just plain knockouts. They’re based in the blues, yet they are not the same blues that we keep hearing, and for that reason have an additional power to them. “Our blues,” says Kooper ‘is a crazy blues. In the arts people are lucky, they can channel their insanity into their form. A lot of us are nuts and music is our outlet. Their blues is a suffering blues. Our blues are a crazy blues.”
The horn section is a thing of beauty. The horns are poised against the rhythm section for a tension that is best compared to Paul McCartney’s “Got to Get You Into My Life” on Revolver. Kooper plays his Hammond for the horns and together they weave in and out in nearly perfect sympathy.
“It’s hard to do an integrated keyboard. When I arrange, I write for the horns what I would ordinarily play. Consequently I’m stuck for things to play and I find myself playing less and less.”
The most significant backgrounds, are those of the horn men; one was with Maynard Ferguson; one went to Berklee School of Music (the jazz school located in Boston) and the other two are from respectable, but unremunerative, jazz backgrounds. They are all professionals, handle themselves and their lines with accuracy and style, and contribute the tightest and most interesting horn section to be found in rock and roll, outside of Memphis and the studios where the Beatles recorded Revolver.
On the organ alone, Al Kooper is capable of taking a song down to its basic riff and rebuilding it piece by piece from their. When the band takes solos, they do so within the context of the song, not as most groups currently take theirs, strictly without thought for the context, or indeed with any context for soloing.
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