Sunday May 16, 2021 “I Can’t Quit Her” Blood Sweat & Tears
Blood Sweat & Tears was a brilliant musical idea buried by their record label’s desire for hits.
Founded by former Blues Project singer/songwriter Al Kooper who played guitar, bass, keyboards, percussion and mandolin, Blood Sweat & Tears was conceived of as an electric rock band that would include horns and use jazz as the basis for their work and their first album did just that paving the way for future configurations like Chicago.
Although their initial offering was bold and musically challenging, much like early Chicago after them, their record label saw only hits and pushed them to create radio friendly pop oriented songs like “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” derailing a musical idea that was about to push some boundaries.
Kooper, who was responsible for the organ riff in Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”, bolted and would move on to things like Super Session with Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills and producing The Tube’s first album/CD, Lynnrd Skynnrd’s first three very successful albums/CDs and writing music scores for several movies.
As for BS&T they soldiered on with hits like “Spinning Wheel” and “Hi Di Ho” and were eventually muscled out of the charts by Chicago.
Stay safe and well...and when was the last time you heard the word ‘prosletyzed’ in a rock song...yeah, never.