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Listening to a lot of these guys lately...wow...what a blast from the late 60's/early 70's.
Here's my favorite Chicago song:
And of course this jazz band stalwart:
There's no doubt Chicago gets the edge for guitar virtuosity, with the explosive Terry Kath, one of THE best and most versatile guitarists of the age. Chicago had great songwriters, several very good singers including Kath, a very good rhythm section and very good brass players. The arrangements from the early albums were very clever, as well--often classically oriented.
Both groups seemed to like Edgar Varese quite a bit... ;-)
BST had better brass players, including Randy Brecker on the very first album, better brass arrangements, and with David Clayton Thomas one of THE best rock singers around. (Al Kooper sang on the first album and was a passable singer, but no DCT.) There songwriting was more scattershot though--they tended to do well with covers.
Anyway, Chicago got into drugs, management problems, and moved toward a softer sound, and the gist of the group died with Terry Kath in 1978. BST had many personnel problems and a lot of friction in the group and never quite recaptured the flame of their early albums, possibly in part because Chicago was becoming such a big act.
What do you guys think? Both great groups, both I could listen to (the early stuff) all day long.
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09-21-2017 06:07 PM
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Blood Sweat and Tears, not even a contest imho. I would have loved to see the tour with Stern on guitar and Jaco subbing on bass...
But we're not supposed to do polls!!! Lol
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Shhh....it's not a poll.
Jaco only played with BST a couple of months. They had quite a few good guitarists when they reformed in the mid-70's, but they were not really guitar-centric in the early years.
Steve Katz was their first guitarist and later moved into production and management for other bands.
Nobody on a par with Terry Kath in 1969 in that kind of a group, though, except maybe Bloomfield of course. But Kath was extremely versatile and had a GREAT tone. On a Tele no less. He also was one of the founders of Pignose amps, btw.
I love the drums and bass on the album Blood Sweat and Tears--the intro to Spinning Wheel--pure gold.
I guess I like these bands because they were the soundtrack to my childhood. I remember listening to the local rock station for hours trying to catch the 2 songs above among others and record them on my Sears cassette player.
My mother still has a cassette I made with And When I Die segueing into They're Coming to Take Me Away...
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I just see both as Rock bands with horns, but BST was the better band great arrangements.
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I should have added that my father worked for Columbia records in the 70s and spent some time with BS&T during a tour so I grew up hearing not only a lot of their music but also how talented, fun and educated they were. I remember anecdotes about Lew Soloff and my dad recognizing Lou Marini from then when we were watching the Blues Brothers
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They were both great groups that grew out of the success of the Buckinghams with the "guitar-keys-and horns" model, which the record companies thought would be a great new niche. Also Electric Flag, Ides of March, a few others.
Of course, many groups in the 50's/60's used horns on top of a rhythm section, but with some exceptions the arrangements were pretty bland. There were generally few brass solos. I don't know about the background of all the players with these 2 groups, but it seems they were pretty grounded both in classical and large band playing with complex arrangements.
Terry Kath was the cofounder and de factor bandleader of Chicago, Al Kooper the bandleader of BST, which influenced their direction in the early years.
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I don't hear either of those bands as jazz-rock. I hear them both as pop/rock bands with horn sections. In that Genre, I'd take Earth Wind and Fire, or Sly and the Family Stone, or P-Funk over either. I'd also take the first BST album (Child is Father to the Man) with Al Kooper over any of the David-Clayton-Thomas era records. The compositions and arrangements on CIFTTM are way hipper than anything the band did post-Kooper.
John
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Have to agree with you there, John.
See you in a couple of weeks at the Wa-Hi jam? (I've been otherwise occupied and playing too much classical lately to even begin contemplating joining you all, but I make an enthusiastic audience member.)
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Got to see that BST band at the Whiskey with Al Kooper still in the band. I still remember Kooper played guitar on one or two songs and had a white Telecaster with big polka dots on it of various colors. That was when Cream and Hendrix were big, guys I knew from a band called Genesis (different band, this one had Kent Henry on guitar) just came from the studio and I remember the drummer looking at BST and saying "they have the whole world on stage". BST sounded great that night.
Originally Posted by John A.
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Labels are the worst but using the almighty wikipedia as source: Originally Posted by John A.
- BS&T: jazz rock
- Chicago: rock, rock with horns
- EW&F: R&B, soul, funk, jazz, disco, pop, rock, Latin and African
- Sly: funk, soul, rock, and psychedelic music
I do think that BS&T and Chicago lack the funk soul element that IMHO distinguishes them from the other two.
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Jazz-Disco is what I like
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Originally Posted by fep
Rock with Hip chords and musicians that grooved.
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Originally Posted by fep
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Pretty
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Pretty:
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Pretty funky:
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Jazz-rock- o'roony
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BS&T grew partly out of the ashes of the Blues Project (Kooper and Katz), which was a great band. BTW, the bassist and drummer started SeaTrain (Kulberg and Blumenthal). Katz was the rhythm guitarist in the Blues Project, which had Danny Kalb playing lead.
I heard BS&T live when DCT first joined them. I thought they were astonishing. At that time, very little rock music used horn sections (I think some blues bands did). Also, the horns were used sort of for power rather than jazz solos, as I recall it. Hard to explain, but my impression was that the arrangements gave the horns the role of adding drama to the song rather than being the song. I think, around that time, my impression of horns was probably from Sinatra's arrangements by Nelson Riddle or Billy May -- and BS&T didn't use them that way.
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What a great thread, takes me back to the early days, a very exciting time listening
to bands like BS &T & Chicago. trying to emulate their sounds ( with only one horn
player, Hammond ,two gtrs bass & drums )plus our very versatile singer. We had a ball
don't know where any of them are now. Fond memories, thanks to fep, DocBop & Mike
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I think I like BST''s overall output more across the years, but those first few Chicago albums are RIDICULOUS.
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Which later BST do you like? Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
John
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A young Bill Chase played for Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, and Maynard Ferguson in the trumpet sections, and then put a horn rock band called Chase together when he saw there might be a market for it. You might remember this tune. One of my big bands pulls out an instrumental chart of this to play every now and then, when the trumpets are feeling frisky...
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Lol, I just grabbed a few CD's and actually looked at dates...probably not later, but I think BST is pretty damn strong from '68-'75, whereas I love Chicago 69-73 or so, but it fades out for me after Chicago VI... Originally Posted by John A.
So pretty close... Chicago I, II, and III...damn. I'm a Man? Free Form Guitar? That first Chicago Transit Authority record is fucking amazing...they never captured that lightning in a bottle again.
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