Blood, Sweat & Tears

A band with horns

Al Kooper left the Blues Project after its leader, Danny Kalb, turned down his idea of a horn section. Kooper has described hearing a sound that began with the blues and added horn charts without losing the rock edge. He found the bassist Jim Fielder, then called in Bobby Colomby and Steve Katz, and Colomby called Fred Lipsius. The band's first shows came at the Village Theatre, later the Fillmore East, in September 1967, and an octet with horns opened for Moby Grape at the Cafe Au Go Go that November. Columbia's Clive Davis said he had never seen horns used that way and signed them on the spot.

Child Is Father to the Man was produced by John Simon and recorded in two weeks in December 1967, with Simon asking everyone to play their parts in one take. It came out in February 1968 and reached 47 on Billboard. Colomby and Katz wanted a stronger lead singer, and Kooper left in April 1968 for a job as a Columbia producer, so it is the only Blood, Sweat & Tears record he is on. Rolling Stone later ranked it at 266 in its list of the 500 greatest albums.

Clayton-Thomas

Judy Collins heard David Clayton-Thomas at a Manhattan club and told Colomby. The band had also considered Alex Chilton, Stephen Stills and Laura Nyro before choosing the Toronto singer. Halligan moved to organ, Lew Soloff and Chuck Winfield took over the trumpets, and the new nine-piece debuted at the Cafe Au Go Go on 18 June 1968.

Blood, Sweat & Tears was recorded in October 1968 at Columbia's 30th Street studio with James William Guercio producing, and appeared on 11 December. Kooper had arranged some of its songs before he left, and Lipsius and Dick Halligan wrote the rest of the horn charts. It spent seven weeks at the top of the US chart, produced three singles that each stalled at number 2, You've Made Me So Very Happy, Spinning Wheel and And When I Die, and won the Grammy for Album of the Year over Abbey Road. Lipsius took a Grammy for his Spinning Wheel arrangement. Jon Landau was unmoved in Rolling Stone, hearing "mediocre rock, OK jazz" thrown together without purpose, though he called Clayton-Thomas an extremely able vocalist and Fielder one of the finest bassmen on the scene.

Woodstock and Eastern Europe

The band headlined Woodstock in August 1969, but its manager ordered a film crew off the stage because the band had neither agreed to be filmed nor been paid. Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 came out in June 1970 and reached number 1, with Hi-De-Ho and Lucretia MacEvil as singles, while the group was away on a State Department tour of Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland. It was the first rock band in that program. The association with the US government was unpopular with American rock fans who opposed the Vietnam War. On 25 July 1970 Abbie Hoffman and fellow Yippies protested outside Madison Square Garden, where the band was headlining. A Caesars Palace engagement was also unpopular with young fans. In 2023 John Scheinfeld's documentary What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? told the story, and the film's critical response was mixed.

After the peak

B, S & T; 4 in June 1971 reached 10 and went Gold, though the critic William Ruhlmann wrote that it marked the end of the band's wide commercial success on record. Clayton-Thomas left after a show at the Anaheim Convention Center on 31 December 1971. New Blood followed in 1972, in the Jerry Fisher era, and Clayton-Thomas came back for New City in 1975. When More Than Ever stalled at 165 in 1976 Columbia dropped the band. Jaco Pastorius played bass for about three months that year before joining Weather Report.

Colomby came to own the trademark. Clayton-Thomas toured under licence from 1984 until November 2004, and the band still tours with a rebuilt line-up, with about 165 members counted since the start. In March 1993 Kooper brought Fielder, Katz, Lipsius and Randy Brecker together for two New York shows billed as a celebration of Child Is Father to the Man.