Blues Project

The Blues Project is a band from the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City that was formed in 1965 and originally split up in 1967. While their songs drew from a wide array of musical styles, they are most remembered as one of the earliest practitioners of psychedelic rock, as well as one of the world's first jam bands, along with the Grateful Dead.
In 1964, Elektra Records produced a compilation album of various artists entitled, The Blues Project, which featured several white musicians from the Greenwich Village area who played acoustic blues music in the style of black musicians. One of the featured artists on the album was a young guitarist named Danny Kalb, who was paid $75 for his two songs. Not long after the album's release, however, Kalb gave up his acoustic guitar for an electric one. The Beatles' arrival in the United States earlier in the year signified the end of the folk and acoustic blues movement that had swept the US in the early 1960s.......Kalb's first rock and roll band was formed in the spring of 1965, playing under various names at first, until finally settling on the Blues Project moniker as an allusion to Kalb's first foray on record.....(Read more at Wikipedia)
== Links to Peel ==
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It's not known whether Peel heard The Blues Project during his time in the United States, but on his Perfumed Garden show on Radio London, their Projections LP was played regularly. Peel said on the programme that the record had been sent to him by a listener whom he described as a "beautiful German psychologist lady" and he was particularly keen on the instrumental "Flute Thing", whose peaceful mood suited his late-night programme. On an undated Perfumed Garden fragment circulating among collectors, Peel announces this track; it starts, but then the needle skips. Peel investigates and finds there's food on the record, and wonders how this could possibly have happened - an incident related to the wrong speed moments of his later shows. He also played "Flute Thing" on the final Perfumed Garden and, like many of the records he featured on the programme, the LP was eventually released in the UK. However it was the only Blues Project LP to become available in Britain, because by the end of 1967 the band had broken up. Nonetheless, Peel reviewed their LP Live At Town Hall in April 1968 in International Times, although he seemed to wander off-topic:
:I hope good music affects you as it does me. Things like the 10 minute 'Electric flute thing' that open this record run through my veins and through my tired old head. Time swims lazily around me unconcerned about its normal function. There are so many good things to hear and so few chances to hear them.....'
After leaving the Blues Project, Al Kooper and Steve Katz formed Blood, Sweat and Tears. Peel played tracks from their first LP but was critical of it in International Times ("already disbanded and so disjointed as to be distracting" ). In fact they didn't disband; after Al Kooper left the group they hired singer David Clayton-Thomas and went on to have spectacular chart success, although Peel disliked them, as did many rock critics who found them too slick and commercial. 
The DJ was a little more sympathetic to Al Kooper's post BS&T work, playing tracks from the acclaimed Super Session LP of 1968 and interviewing Kooper as a studio guest on the Night Ride of 20 November 1968. He played a couple of tracks from the final LP credited to the Blues Project, Planned Obsolescence, in 1969, although by that point the band was what became Seatrain and only used the Blues Project name for legal reasons. On the show of 09 February 1969 he called them “one of the most underrated American bands”. But he was less impressed by the Blues Project's reunion albums of the early 1970s.
== Festive Fifty Entries ==
*None
== Sessions ==
*None
== Other Shows Played ==
*12 July 1967: (JP: "And we got our first LP from our beautiful German psychologist lady doctor person during the last week, and it was by the Blues Project and it’s called Projections. So thank you very much, beautiful lady doctor psychologist. Because it’s very, very sweet -- she sends me these records, and we are very grateful to her, because otherwise we wouldn’t hear them. And this is called Fly Away and it’s by the Blues Project.")- Fly Away (LP - Projections) Verve(JP: "A very versatile group, actually. Those are the Blues Project from Greenwich Village, New York, and that was called Fly Away on a Verve Folkways LP from America. Very nice.")
*18 July 1967: You Can't Catch Me (album - Projections) Verve Forecast FT 3008
*19 July 1967: Steve's Song (LP - Projections) Verve Forecast FT 3008 (US release)
*14 August 1967: Flute Thing (LP - Projections) Verve Forecast FT 3008 (US release)
*22 December 1968: If You've Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody (LP: Projections) Verve
*05 January 1969: unknown (sourced from David Cavanagh's Good Night And Good Riddance book)
*09 February 1969: Niartaes Hornpipe (album - Planned Obsolescence) Verve
*09 March 1969 (as Blood Sweat And Tears): More And More (LP - Blood Sweat And Tears) CBS
*16 March 1969: If You Got To Make A Fool Of Someone (LP - Planned Obsolescence) Verve Forecast
*18 February 1999 (Radio Eins): Steve's Song (album - Projections) Verve Forecast FT 3008
== See also ==
*Rock Family Trees: California Dreamin': includes Al Kooper and Blood, Sweat & Tears
*International Times: Perfumed Garden Column
== External Links ==
*Wikipedia
* Official site
* Other
Category:Artists