Blood, Sweat & Tears Biography

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Blood, Sweat & Tears
Pop Music | 3 CD Set
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From a worldly point of view, it's not hard to choose a year and attach history to it: Take a year, any year. For this piece, we'll look at 1969. Nixon, Vietnam, anding on the moon, racial politics, hippies and music were all in the headlines. It was the year of muddy joy at Woodstock and later the tragic year of death at the Altamont Rock Festival. It was the last year of the touring Beatles. And it was the year that Blood, Sweat and Tears roared up the charts and into the eclectic minds of music fans learning there was more to pop and rock music than the Beatles, the Stones or Herman's Hermits. And it was the year jazz was evolving into fusion with Miles Davis creating two albums, "In a Silent Way" and the critical "Bitches’ Brew." Blood, Sweat and Tears (BST) was formed in 1967 out of the Blues Project band with Al Kooper, Bobby Columby and Steve Katz leading the way. Horns may have earlier been utilized occasionally but hardly in the way BST and the other jazz-fusion (as it would come to be called) band Chicago would do it. These were horn bands – eight- and nine-piece bands that were taking rock rhythms and creating something new. (Miles would take it into different territory.) BST had two very successful albums in 1968 and 1969, including the debut album "Child Is Father To the Man." Kooper then left and in ’69 the band released the second LP, "Blood, Sweat and Tears," which almost immediately made the charts. The album was No. 1 for a while but three of its tunes, "You’ve Made Me So Very Happy," "Spinning Wheel" and "And When I Die," each captured No. 2 slots on the Top 40 for multiple weeks. The band won Grammys and gold records and was now a big hit. Of course, the reorganized band that made this album now included the singer who would go on to be more associated with BST than anyone else and to eventually be Mr. Blood, Sweat and Tears: David Clayton-Thomas. His vocals made those three singles big hits and would help make the next two albums, BST 3 and BST 4, money-makers, too. The band had three more Top 40 hits in 1970-71. Clayton-Thomas, who was born in Surrey, England in 1941 and raised musically in Toronto, left in 1972 but returned in 1974 and by the late '70s he was the only stable figure in the band, along with Columby, who retained rights to the band name. Aside from Clayton-Thomas, the band over the years has had many personnel changes. One Internet website lists more than two dozen names of musicians who’ve been part of BST. Never really a rock band and never really a jazz band, it had elements of both, and fans of rock probably had a tough time with the longer works that paid homage to Bartok and Satie while the jazz types in the audience and in the band were thinking along more swinging lines. The band played Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden, headlined the Woodstock Festival, played at Fillmore West and East and was featured at the Newport Jazz Festival. As the '70s moved on, BST (and Chicago) found other bands forging their own histories. Tower of Power and Earth, Wind and Fire, for example, were successful horn bands and this fusion of rock and jazz was now a genre of its own. The competition and the infighting were becoming fierce, but Clayton-Thomas stayed above it. He left the group twice but kept coming back. BST has become an occasional entertainment package and is still doing concerts. The band released a greatest hits package in 1999 and had show dates in 2002.

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