Blood, Sweat & Tears (also known as "BS&T") is a jazz rock music group founded in New York City in 1967, noted for a combination of brass with rock instrumentation. In addition to original music, the group has performed popular songs by Laura Nyro, James Taylor, the Band, the Rolling Stones, and Billie Holiday. They have also adapted music from Erik Satie, Thelonious Monk and Sergei Prokofiev into their arrangements. The band has gone through numerous iterations with varying personnel and has encompassed a wide range of musical styles. Their sound has merged rock, pop and R&B/soul music with big band, while also adding elements of 20th-century classical and small combo jazz traditions. Al Kooper era The group was inspired by the "brass-rock" ideas of the Buckinghams and its producer, James William Guercio, as well as the early 1960s Roulette-era Maynard Ferguson Orchestra. Al Kooper, Bobby Colomby, Steve Katz, and Jim Fielder did a show at the Village Theatre (later renamed Fillmore East) in New York City on September 16, 1967, with James Cotton Blues Band opening.Kooper acted as the group's initial singer and musical director, having insisted on that position based on his work with the Blues Project, his previous band with Steve Katz. Kooper had also contributed to recording sessions of Bob Dylan and others. Colomby had played with various folk musicians. Fielder previously worked with Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention and Buffalo Springfield. Fred Lipsius then joined the others a month later. A few more shows were played as a quintet before Lipsius recruited fellow horn players Dick Halligan, Randy Brecker, and Jerry Weiss. The octet debuted at the Cafe Au Go Go on November 17–19, 1967, then played The Scene the following week. The band was a hit with the audience, who liked the innovative fusion of contemporary styles. After signing to Columbia Records, the group released Child Is Father to the Man. The debut album cover showed band members with child-sized versions of themselves. Growing artistic differences quickly resulted in personnel changes. Colomby and Katz wanted to move Kooper exclusively to keyboard and composing duties, while hiring a stronger vocalist for the group. This led to the departure of Kooper in April 1968.Kooper became a record producer for Columbia, but not before arranging some songs that would be on the next BS&T album. The group's trumpeters, Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss, also left and were replaced by Lew Soloff and Chuck Winfield. Brecker joined Horace Silver's band with his brother Michael, and together they eventually formed their own horn-dominated musical outfits, Dreams and the Brecker Brothers. Jerry Weiss went on to start the similarly-styled group Ambergris. David Clayton-Thomas era After Kooper left the group, Colomby and Katz began to look for a new vocalist, considering Alex Chilton (after the breakup of the soul-rock group the Box Tops but before the formation of Big Star), Stephen Stills, and Laura Nyro. Ultimately, they decided upon David Clayton-Thomas, a Canadian singer, born in Surrey, England. Reportedly, folk singer Judy Collins had seen Clayton-Thomas perform at a New York City club and was so taken and moved by his performance that she told Colomby and Katz about him (knowing that they were looking for a new lead singer to front the band). With her prodding, they went to see Clayton-Thomas perform and were so impressed that he was offered the role of lead singer in a reconstituted Blood Sweat & Tears. Trombonist Halligan took up the organ chores and Jerry Hyman joined to take over trombone. With new trumpeters Soloff and Winfield the now nine-member band debuted at New York's Cafe Au Go Go on June 18, 1968, beginning a two-week residency. The group's second album, Blood, Sweat & Tears, was produced by James William Guercio and released in January 1969. It was more pop-oriented, featuring fewer compositions by the band. The record quickly hit the top of the charts, winning Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards over the Beatles' Abbey Road, among other nominees. Three hit singles were released from Blood, Sweat & Tears: a cover of Berry Gordy and Brenda Holloway's "You've Made Me So Very Happy", Clayton-Thomas' "Spinning Wheel", and a version of Nyro's "And When I Die". Each of these three No. 2 singles was on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 chart for 13 weeks. The commercial and critical acclaim enjoyed by the band in 1969 culminated in an appearance at Woodstock, in which the band enjoyed headliner status. The festival's film crew even caught the band's opening number, "More and More", as they took to the stage. But the band's manager at the time, Bennett Glotzer, ordered the movie crew to turn off the cameras and leave the stage since the band had not agreed nor been paid to be filmed. While Blood, Sweat & Tears achieved commercial success alongside similarly configured ensembles such as Chicago and the Electric Flag, the band had difficulty maintaining its status as a counterculture icon at a time when record company executives deemed this characteristic important as a tool to lure young consumers. This was compounded by the band going on a United States Department of State-sponsored tour of Eastern Europe in May/June 1970. Any voluntary association with the government was highly unpopular at the time, and the band was ridiculed for it. It is now known that the State Department subtly requested the tour in exchange for more amicability on the issuance of a visa to Clayton-Thomas.After returning to the U.S., the group released Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 (June 1970), produced by Roy Halee and drummer Colomby. The album was another popular success, spawning hit singles with a cover of Carole King's "Hi-De-Ho" and another Clayton-Thomas composition, "Lucretia MacEvil". While this was a successful attempt to recreate the amalgam of styles found on the previous album, the band again depended almost exclusively on cover material. Album reviews sometimes focused solely upon the band's willingness to work with the U.S. State Department, without bothering to discuss the actual music. Compounding the image problems of the band was a decision to play at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip, widely seen at the time as a mainstream venue for acts that did not engage in radical politics. In late 1970, the band provided music for the soundtrack of the film comedy The Owl and the Pussycat , which starred Barbra Streisand and George Segal, further damaging the group's underground reputation. Following this period of controversy, the group reconvened in San Francisco in January 1971 with jazz writer/saxophonist Don Heckman serving as their producer. With Dave Bargeron replacing Jerry Hyman, they recorded material that would form the basis of their fourth album, BS&T 4 (June 1971). For the first time since the first album, Blood, Sweat & Tears presented a repertoire of songs composed .... Discover the Elise Sax popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Elise Sax books.