Great session

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Great session
Studio album by Al Kooper / Mike Bloomfield / Stephen Stills

Publication
(s)

July 1968

admission

May 1968

Label (s) Columbia Records

Format (s)

LP

Genre (s)

Blues rock / blues

Title (number)

9

running time

50:08

occupation

production

Al Cooper

chronology
- Great session The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper

Super Session is a blues rock album by the American musician Al Kooper , which he recorded independently with the two guitarists Mike Bloomfield (on the LP version 1st side) and Stephen Stills (2nd side) in 1968. It peaked at number 12 on the US charts.

Emergence

In the spring of 1968, Al Kooper left the band Blood, Sweat & Tears after recording their first album. Cooper had reserved a studio in Los Angeles and called Mike Bloomfield, who had just split up with his band Electric Flag and whom he knew from the recordings for Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited , to see if he was on a jam session with bassist Harvey Brooks and drummer Eddie Hoh, and keyboardist Barry Goldberg wanted to participate. Bloomfield agreed and they recorded five pieces in six hours. When Mike Bloomfield didn't show up the next day, Stephen Stills replaced him on guitar. Some of the pieces were subsequently mixed with wind instruments by Al Kooper.

The collaboration between Kooper and Bloomfield, which began with Super Session , then led to a series of concerts and two other albums: The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper (1969) and the Fillmore East: The Lost Concert Tapes, which was only released in 2003 .

style

The Mike Bloomfield page mainly contains bluesy instrumentals, the His Holy Modal Majesty , which is reminiscent of John Coltrane and modal jazz , and a cover version of the soul piece Man's Temptation by Curtis Mayfield . The Stephen Stills recording is dominated by the 11-minute cover version of Donovan's Season of the Witch , alongside a Bob Dylan piece and a psychedelic version of Willie Cobbs ' You Don't Love Me .

reception

Lindsay Planer from Allmusic considers Super Session to be just as groundbreaking for the development of rock music as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band of the Beatles, which appeared a year earlier .

"In the space of mere months, the soundscape of rock shifted radically from two- and three-minute danceable pop songs to comparatively longer works with more attention to technical and musical subtleties."

"Within a few months the soundscape of rock has fundamentally shifted from danceable two- to three-minute pop songs to comparatively longer pieces with a focus on technical and musical subtleties"

- Lindsay planner :

Track list

Page 1 (lead guitar Mike Bloomfield)

  1. "Albert's Shuffle" (Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper) - 6:43
  2. "Stop" ( Jerry Ragovoy , Mort Shuman ) - 4:23
  3. "Man's Temptation" ( Curtis Mayfield ) - 3:25
  4. "His Holy Modal Majesty" (Bloomfield, Kooper) - 9:13
  5. "Really" (Bloomfield, Kooper) - 5:29

Page 2 (lead guitar Stephen Stills)

  1. "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" ( Bob Dylan ) - 3:30
  2. "Season of the Witch" ( Donovan Leitch ) - 11:07
  3. " You Don't Love Me " ( Willie Cobbs ) - 4:11
  4. "Harvey's Tune" ( Harvey Brooks ) - 2:07

Additional musicians

  • Barry Goldberg : E-Piano on Albert's Shuffle and Stop
  • Wind section: subsequently mixed in, arranged by Joey Scott and Al Kooper

Additional titles on 2003 release

  1. "Albert's Shuffle" (Bloomfield, Kooper) - 6:58 recording without wind instruments
  2. "Season of the Witch" (Leitch) - 11:07 recording without wind instruments
  3. "Blues for Nothing" - 4:15
  4. "Fat Gray Cloud" (Bloomfield, Kooper) - 4:38 am Live at Fillmore West

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Super session in the US charts
  2. ↑ About the recording
  3. ↑ John Metzger on Super Session
  4. ↑ Review of the album by Lindsay Planer

Web links