Blood, Sweat & Tears is the second album by the band Blood, Sweat & Tears, released in 1968. It was commercially successful, rising to the top of the U.S. charts for a collective seven weeks and yielding three successive Top 5 singles. It received a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1970 and has been certified quadruple platinum by the RIAA with sales of more than four million units in the U.S. In Canada, it enjoyed four runs and altogether eight weeks at No. 1 on the RPM national album chart.
History
Bandleader Al Kooper and two other members, Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss, had left Blood, Sweat & Tears after their first album. Bobby Colomby and Steve Katz searched for a replacement singer and selected David Clayton-Thomas. Three more musicians joined to bring the band to nine members. Columbia assigned James William Guercio to produce a new album. The song selection was much more pop-oriented than the first album, with more compositions from outside the band. It was recorded at the then state of the art CBS Studios in New York City. The studio had just taken delivery of one of the first of the model MM-1000 16-tracktape recorders, built by Ampex. The new technology allowed for far more flexibility in overdubbing and mixing than the 4 and 8-track tape recorders which were standard in 1968. The album was among the very first 16-track recordings released to the public. An additional song, "Children of the Wind" was recorded for the album but was not included. It later appeared on the compilation, The Very Best of Blood, Sweat and Tears: What Goes Up!
Reception
In his Allmusic retrospective review, music critic William Ruhlmann called the players a "less adventurous unit" than on the debut album, but called the album more accessible... It was a repertoire to build a career on, and Blood, Sweat & Tears did exactly that, although they never came close to equaling this album." In his lengthy contemporary review, Jon Landau of Rolling Stone dismissed the album, writing; "The listener responds to the illusion that he is hearing something new when in fact he is hearing mediocre rock, OK jazz, etc., thrown together in a contrived and purposeless way." The album was voted number 660 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. It was selected for the 2006 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Track listing
Side 1
"Variations on a Theme By Erik Satie" – 2:35
*Adapted from "Trois Gymnopédies"; arr. by Dick Halligan
