Today I’m going to take a trip back in time to the late 60’s. In fact, let’s set “the wayback machine” to the magical year of 1968. This is the year after the magical year of 1967 and “the summer of love.” In the musical spectrum, 1968 is definitely not remembered as fondly as ’67, but I am bringing attention to it for a couple of “firsts.” I stumbled upon these when I found out that July 28 was the anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach, who died in 1750.
I remembered that there was a “Bach”-type fugue in the middle of “Just One Smile” by Blood, Sweat & Tears from their groundbreaking album released in 1968, “Child Is Father to the Man.” Yes, I said groundbreaking. Looking back, apparently there was some controversy about adding jazz horns to rock music. Go figure!? (“Man, I need to sit down and catch my breath because they’re talking about doing something really radical, like adding horns to rock music, already a derivative of R&B. I don’t know if the musical world can handle it.”) Well, believe it or not, that’s pretty much a true statement, and it took a musical genius of a talent, Al Kooper, as the band’s leader, to pull it off.
The album loosely follows The Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Now, I’m not saying that “Child Is Father…” is as good as “Sgt. Pepper,” I’m just saying that they sort of copied the album format. In the music business, if something is successful, the best way to be successful yourself is to copy that formula. Well, B, S & T still came up with their own idea, but they based the album set-up on “Sgt. Pepper.”
But “Child Is Father” is not just a jazz influenced album, it’s all over the place. It is basically a “pop” album with bits and pieces of other musical styles–including classical music. “I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know” is a blues number with horns. “Morning Glory” —a Tim Buckley cover, “My Days Are Numbered,” “I Can’t Quit Her”—covered by The Arbors who had a minor hit with it, “Meagan’s Gypsy Eyes,” and “So Much Love” are mid-tempo “pop” songs. “Without Her” —which was later covered by Herb Alpert, really takes flight with a superb flugelhorn solo by Randy Brecker, and “Somethin’ Goin’ On,” which sounds more bluesy than jazzy except for the extended solos and a staggered walking bass line, just slightly different than a normal blues line, are the songs that carry the jazz banner highest. There is also a silly pseudo-psychedelic faster tune, “House in the Country” that sounds like it must have been a blast to record, especially since the la-las in the song are so high that most of the band members can’t reach the notes! (Interestingly enough, those la-las appear as part of an instrumental run by Ray Manzarek in The Doors’ “LA Woman.”)
“Child” starts off with an “Overture”, just strings with some overdubbed insanity. The same nonsense occurs as a tag at the end of “So Much Love” –except done even more chaotically and listed as “Underture.”
So that leaves the most interesting songs on the album. One is “The Modern Adventures of Plato, Diogenes, and Freud.” This song is a classical piece-just a string quartet and an Al Kooper vocal. The subject matter is mature (The price you pay exclusive of the taxes/To chop you up inside with tiny axes—always a favorite of mine), and the strings play a haunting staccato pizzicato arrangement. I have to think that “Eleanor Rigby” or “She’s Leaving Home” was the inspiration for the setting of this type of song. I think it’s the second best song on the album!
My personal favorite is a song that sounds simple when you hear it, but if you examine it, it is stuffed with all kinds of gems! “Just One Smile’s” words are simple: Can I cry a little bit/There’s nobody to notice it. (Aww, boo hoo!) The verses are done with minor chords, but the song explodes into a bright chorus shifting to major chords because… “Just one smile pain’s forgiven/Just one kiss girl, now the hurt’s all gone.” The connecting runs are short syncopated time changing notes that cause the song to speed up and then retard for the verse. The middle instrumental section has the previously mentioned Bach influenced fugue. The song ends with a mellow brass ensemble that deteriorates into discordant notes. This is an underappreciated and long forgotten piece of art. I hadn’t listened to it in so long that I forgot how good it actually is!
So, here we have an album that is supposed to be the exploding matter of jazz-rock but it’s really a transitional hodgepodge of an album. There are seven pop songs, a blues song, a jazz-blues hybrid, two classical entries, and one pure jazz track. That would probably open up the discussion for ridicule, but the effort is so creative (including the album cover which creeps me out sometimes), and the approach is so honest that it deserves all of the credit it deserves.
And as much as I don’t want to admit it, the album really did knock down walls. Teens listening to rock wouldn’t ever want to listen to jazz. If anything, they would be more inclined to listen to blues, but the average teen was years behind England and Europe in that category at that time, and frankly, still are. The success of the experiment could be measured with the release of the next Blood, Sweat & Tears album, an eponymous titled one, which went all the way to #1, as well as the long continued success of Chicago in the same genre.
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Until next time, take care of yourself, and take care of each other!
Peace!
Q
