Child Is Father to the Man

Al Kooper heard Maynard Ferguson as a teenager and wanted a rock band with horns. After the Blues Project refused the idea he found Jim Fielder, brought in Bobby Colomby and Steve Katz, and Colomby called Fred Lipsius. An advertisement in The Village Voice brought more horn players, and within a month there was an eight-piece band with Randy Brecker, Jerry Weiss and Dick Halligan. John Simon, fresh from producing Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends, produced it. The album was recorded in two weeks in December 1967, and Simon asked everyone to play in one take so that he could study the songs and suggest changes to the arrangements.

It reached 47 on Billboard. No single entered the Top 40, but I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know and I Can't Quit Her were played on progressive rock radio. The title quotes a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem that slightly misquotes Wordsworth. Lipsius says he wrote the first horn arrangements at the piano beside Kooper, who played the tunes while Lipsius wrote the parts down, and that Kooper left room for him to add an introduction, an ending or a line. A UK budget sampler, The Rock Machine Turns You On, included My Days Are Numbered and gave the band a wider audience. Rolling Stone ranked the album at 266 in 2012.