Musicians - Blood, Sweat & Tears

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	Musicians - Blood, Sweat & Tears

Blood, Sweat & Tears was an American rock and roll group formed in New York City in 1967.

Al Kooper era

Al Kooper, Jim Fielder, Fred Lipsius, Randy Brecker, Jerry Weiss, Dick Halligan, Steve Katz, Bill Tillman and Bobby Colomby formed the original incarnation of the band, which was named after a 1963 album by Johnny Cash. Kooper was bandleader, having insisted on that position based on his experiences with The Blues Project, his previous band, which had been organized as an egalitarian collective and fallen apart (The Blues Project had also featured Katz).

The group debuted at Cafe Au Go Go in New York City in 1967, opening for Moby Grape; the band was a hit with the audience, who liked the innovative fusion of jazz with psychedelic rock and roll. After signing to Columbia Records, the group released one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the 1960s, Child is Father to the Man. Without any pop-oriented hit singles, though, the album's sales were sluggish. While sales slowly picked up, personality conflicts started tearing apart the band. Colomby and Katz wanted to move Kooper to the organ exclusively and hire a vocalist for the group. With the debut album slowly achieving critical mass, Kooper left the group to become a record producer for Columbia. Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss also quit, joining Horace Silver's band and Ambergris, respectively.

David Clayton-Thomas era

Colomby and Katz started recruiting singers, considering the still unknown Stephen Stills and Laura Nyro before settling on David Clayton-Thomas, a Canadian singer. Chuck Winfield, Lew Soloff and Jerry Hyman joined soon after to bring the band up to nine total members. Blood, Sweat & Tears, the group's second, self-titled album, was produced by James William Guercio and released in 1969. The album was much more pop-oriented, featuring decidedly fewer compositions from within the band. It quickly hit the top of the charts and won Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards. It spawned three major hit singles: a cover of Brenda Holloway's "You've Made Me So Very Happy", Clayton-Thomas' "Spinning Wheel", and a version of Nyro's "And When I Die".

Because of the presence of horns and the lack of Al Kooper, Blood, Sweat & Tears had trouble holding onto any sort of countercultural hipness at a time when this was very important. This was compounded by a United States Department of State-sponsored tour of Eastern Europe. Any voluntary association with the government was extremely unpopular at the time, and the band was ridiculed for it. In retrospect, it is now known that the State Department subtly requested the tour in exchange for more amicability on the issue of Clayton-Thomas' visa.

After returning Stateside, the group released Blood, Sweat & Tears 3; though it was a popular success, spawning hit singles with a cover of Carole King's "Hi-De-Ho" and "Lucretia MacEvil", another Clayton-Thomas composition, it was a critical failure. While this was partially due to the fact that the album was a less-successful attempt to re-create the success of the previous album, leaning almost exclusively (again) on cover material, sometimes to disastrous results, a lot of journalists also felt the need to slag the band over the State-Department tour (in fact, many reviews would focus solely upon that, without even bothering to talk about the album). Compounding the image problems was a decision to play at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, a notoriously unhip place in an unhip city.

Following all of this turmoil, the group re-convened with jazz writer Don Heckman serving as their producer, recording material that would comprise their fourth album (at this time, Jerry Hyman was replaced by Dave Bargeron). For the first time since Child Is Father to the Man, almost all of the material came from within the group, and the group even included a cover of Al Kooper's "Holy John (John The Baptist)" (the only tune not associated with the group was a cover of The Isley Brothers' "Take Me In Your Arms"). Though the record did make the top ten and go gold, it generally marked the end of the group's commercial heyday.

Further personnel changes

Personality difficulties had split the group in rock and jazz factions, with Clayton-Thomas in the middle; he chose to quit to pursue a solo career. He was replaced by Bobby Doyle, then Jerry Fisher. Fred Lipsius quit and was replaced by jazz legend Joe Henderson, before Lou Marini settled into the lineup. Dick Halligan was replaced by another jazz legend, Larry Willis, while Swedish guitarist George Wadenius joined as a second guitarist. Amidst the personnel changes, a Greatest Hits album was released, which hit the top 20 and eventually went gold. It would be their last gold album.

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