When a Townsperson sent in Blood, Sweat & Tears’ 1968 album, Child Is Father to the Man, I knew which Hear Factor CD would be staying with me. It’s well known around here that I consider the band’s version of “And When I Die” the song I hate most in rock. “Spinning Wheel” isn’t far behind. “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” is another song I dread hearing. All that brassy bombast couched in Love Generation threads creeps me out. I like my share of velvet-jacketed ’60 bombast as well as my share of hippie music, but the Blood, Sweat & Tears I’d grown up hearing got the mix all wrong, and I hold them responsible for the similarly brassy, bombastic sound of the bands Chicago and Earth, Wind & Fire.
Before I gave this album even one spin, I tried to calculate whether it would be better or worse not having David Clayton-Thomas sing on this album. I knew this album was from their early period, when Al Kooper, was thought of as some kind of blues-jazz-rock visionary and still is in some circles that consider it worth talking to him about anything but his fortunate and vital role in Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”. Clayton-Thomas was the voice of these hits I grew up hating, but the specter of Kooper was no stroll in the park for me as well. As I’ve made clear, his work in merging big band sounds with pseudo-hippie rock crossed the line with me, a line that I grew up more than willing to toe with my cherished childhood collection of Joe Cocker records. Now that was some horn-driven hippie rock. Let it all hang out! No blackface routine and embarrassng oom-pa-pa’s from The Mad Dogs and the Englishmen. But I digress.
Child Is Father to the Man opens with an obligatory, for the times, “Overture”. To my surprise, it was a pleasant string-driven melody that was devoid of the brassy bombast I’d come to dread in the music of Blood, Sweat & Tears. I guess the overture has made a comeback in the last 10 years, with the spate of Elephant 6-related bands who feel the need to allow listeners a minute to settle in. Not bad at all.
With the first proper song, however, I got my first expected taste of BS&T. “Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know” opens with electric piano and white jazz-blues singing. In due time the song is punctuated by those big, brassy horn arrangements. Sweet Daddy-o, how I cringe at that sound! On Day 1 of my listening experience I wrote in my journal,
“Blood, Sweat & Tears must have helped a lot of high school band geeks feel like they were part of the revolution. And this must be the kind of music Paul Weller revisited to give him the strength he needed to start recording all those songs from his solo album that I skip,”
By Day 2 this song inspired the image of a greasy, pock-marked guy with a thin goatee dry humping a black Lycra-clad, halter top-wearing barfly on the small dance floor of a neighborhood bar. Thankfully things would pick up.
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