Child Is Father to the Man
Child Is Father to the Man is the debut album by Blood, Sweat & Tears, released in February 1968. It reached number 47 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart in the United States. History. As a teenager, Al Kooper went to a concert for jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson and this experience inspired Kooper to start a rock band with a horn section. Originally in a band called The Blues Project, Kooper left after band leader Danny Kalb rejected his idea of bringing in a horn section. He then left for the West Coast and found  bassist Jim Fielder who believed in the songs that Kooper wrote. Though Kooper had big ideas for his next project, he didn't have the money to bring his ideas to fruition. He then threw a benefit for himself and invited several musicians he previously worked with, such as Judy Collins, Simon & Garfunkel, David Blue, Eric Andersen and Richie Havens. Although the performances sold out, the owner of the Cafe Au Go Go added numerous expenses to the gross receipts that the net receipts after the performance were not enough to get a plane ticket or a taxi to the  airport. He later called Fielder and convinced him to come to New York. He also asked Bobby Colomby, Anderson and Steve Katz, who was his bandmate in his former band The Blues Project. Colomby called Fred Lipsius and the band placed an ad in The Village Voice for more horn players. Within a month, the band assembled an eight piece which also contained Randy Brecker, Jerry Weiss and Dick Halligan. Kooper then asked John Simon to produce them, after being fresh off from producing Simon & Garfunkel's album "Bookends". The album was recorded in two weeks in December 1967. Simon  asked all of the members to record their material in one take so he could study songs and make useful suggestions to the arrangements. After a brief promotional tour, Colomby and Katz ousted Kooper from the band, which led to "Child is Father to the Man" being the only BS&T album on which Kooper ever appeared. The band would later have two number one albums and several Grammys, although Kooper felt they were playing music that he didn't agree with. Despite being asked to leave Blood, Sweat & Tears, Kooper felt everything worked out well for him and the band . Commercial performance. In the United States "Child Is Father to the Man" peaked at #47 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart. It failed to generate any Top 40 singles, although "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" and "I Can't Quit Her" found some play on progressive rock radio. In 2012, the album was ranked number 266 on "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The title is a quotation from a by Gerard Manley Hopkins, slightly misquoting a poem by William Wordsworth called "My Heart Leaps Up". The album was  re-released in the UK in 1973, entitled "The First Album" on Embassy Records, a subsidiary of Columbia Records (catalogue number EMB 31028) with an identical track listing and the same picture on the front of the sleeve. The rear had new sleeve notes written by English DJ, Noel Edmonds. Reception. Writing for AllMusic, critic William Ruhlman wrote of the album:"Al Kooper's finest work, an album on which he moves the folk-blues-rock amalgamation of the Blues Project into even wider pastures, taking in classical and jazz elements (including strings and horns), all without losing the pop essence  that makes the hybrid work. This is one of the great albums of the eclectic post-Sgt. Pepper era of the late '60s, a time when you could borrow styles from Greenwich Village contemporary folk to San Francisco acid rock and mix them into what seemed to have the potential to become a new American musical form... This is the sound of a group of virtuosos enjoying itself in the newly open possibilities of pop music. Maybe it couldn't have lasted; anyway, it didn't." Personnel. Blood, Sweat & Tears Additional musicians Charts. Album - Billboard (United States) Child Is Father