FEATURE FRIDAY: BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS

 Blood, Sweat and Tears is a good name for a band who applied a lot of effort but also went through a lot of line up changes. A jazz-rock band, they innovatively found ways to bring the old in with the psychedelic new and form a legacy of their own. 

The initial band leader was Al Kooper, who based much of his experience on his work with former band the Blues Project. He had worked with some bigger names and was already a face of forming the 60s musical counterculture. During live shows, the band began growing, forming into the first album form. The album cover for "Child is Father to the Man" was considered innovative for its time, although the record did not sell as well. Creative differences caused the first line-up to struggle and a new one was already being forged.

When Kooper decided to forge a new trail, the two remaining members decided to look for a new lead singer. After wanting to go for some more prominent vocalist, they settled with David Clayton-Thomas, who in my eyes looks as if he'd be an entirely different sort of musician than he is. They then found three new members to replace the other lost members to get back to their work. Their second album, self-titled, had few original compositions but rose to the charts compared to the first. It beat out "Abbey Road" for the Grammy and allowed them to get an appearance at the famed Woodstock. They did not agree or paid to be filmed, so there is not professional footage of them there. 

They struggled to keep their "counterculture" persona after doing a government sponsored tour of Eastern Europe in 1970. However, it is now known they did this in exchange for a visa for Clayton-Thomas, as he was actually a citizen of Canada. 

They then release Blood Sweat and Tears 3, which again relied heavily on cover songs to gain success. It also did not help they continued their sponsored touring and many began to see them as part of the system they were against. Doing the soundtrack for "The Owl and the Pussycat" did not help their image either, ruining their underground status. 

After the controversies, they came together for BS&T4, which gave them a gold album but no high charting singles. It was, however, the first album since their debut to rely mostly on original material. This however was the begin of their commercial decline.

Clayton-Thomas decided to pursue a solo career and left after BS&T4, leaving the band with interim leads Bobby Doyle and then Jerry Fisher. The new line up released "New Blood", moving the band into a more fusion-jazz centered sound. This era had two albums with inconsistent line ups for the band, but stayed within the same fusion-jazz center.

In 1974, they began attempting to recruit Clayton-Thomas back into the group. He agreed for a while before returning to his mostly failed solo career. They since have underwent other lead vocalist changes, with founder Bobby Colomby being the only consistent member of the group. Most recently, their lead vocalist has been Keith Paulso. They continue a very heavy touring schedule as well, with many releases having become live albums. 

Take your dive into a group that created a new landscape for music and brought genres together that we may have not thought of before. Anything by Blood Sweat and Tears will be 10% off today for Feature Friday.