Super Session

Super Session

Super Session
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CD Details

Brand: KOOPER/BLOOMFIELD/STILLS
Edition: Music CD
Format: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2003-04-08
Music Label: Sony
Soundtracks:
  1. Albert's Shuffle
  2. Stop
  3. Man's Temptation
  4. His Holy Modal Majesty
  5. Really
  6. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
  7. Season Of The Witch
  8. You Don't Love Me
  9. Harvey's Tune
  10. Albert's Shuffle (2002 Remix w/o Horns)
  11. Season Of The Witch (2002 Remix w/o Horns)
  12. Blues For Nothing
  13. Fat Grey Cloud (Live)

Music reviews of Super Session

Music Review: jammin'
Rating: 4 Stars

My brother brought home a vinyl copy of 1968's `Super Session' sometime around 1969, and the presence of one performer caught my eye. I was already overindulging myself on the debut Crosby, Stills and Nash album, and had taken special notice of Stephen Stills contributions, especially his exquisite guitar work. After the first play through, I never heard the first 5 tracks of `Super Session' again... I played side two over and over until the needle had worn clean through side one! Well, I'm kidding of course, but the point is that this 15 year-old was much too young for the cutting edge blues-rock being composed and performed by Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield on side one, but primed and ready for the country and psychedelic rock being offered up by Stills and Kooper on side two.

Hearing this album (remastered) for the first time in about thirty years was a real treat. I still prefer side two, but did a jaw drop over Bloomfield's stunning blues guitar solo's on the first five tracks, and on two of the bonus tracks (`Blues For Nothing' and `Fat Grey Cloud', the latter recorded live at the Fillmore West). On the downside, Bloomfield was so strung out on heroin that Kooper couldn't keep him around for more than one night of recording. On the upside, certainly no artist can sing or play the blues better than someone living the blues, and this recording proves the blues was Bloomfield's lot in life. Heroin claimed him for good in 1981.

With only half an album in tow, Kooper turned to Stills, orphaned from the recently disbanded Buffalo Springfield, to complete this most unusual endeavor. Stylistically Stills and Bloomfield have radically different approaches. On the opening cut of side two, Stills layers a country-fied guitar over Bob Dylans `It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry', and follows this with his trademark wah-pedal guitar on an 11-minute version of Donovan Lietch's `Season of the Witch'. My favorite song on the album follows with Stills and Kooper producing a psychedelic cover of `You Don't Love Me'. Oddly, though Kooper is the only artist featured on all the cuts, the work is clearly owned primarily by Bloomfield, and secondarily by Stills. Kooper's most notable contributions are songwriting (one solo, and three with Bloomfield), and all the vocals (5 cuts). But the vocals are incidental, to say the least.

There are several odd selections on `Super Session'. The third cut, `Man's Temptation' is a soul number penned by Curtis Mayfield. It's a pleasant listen, though quite sexist by our standards today, and out of place among the heavy blues orientation of the other Bloomfield cuts. Track four, `His Holy Modal Majesty' is a dreadful cut, with Kooper playing an electric piano called an ondioline, which comes across as electric bagpipes, and it's every bit as bad as that sounds. At 9 minutes in length, it is a clear waste of vinyl. The other odd number is the lush `Harvey's Tune', penned by Harvey Brooks who played bass on the `Super Session' sessions. Brooks and Barry Goldberg, who plays electric piano on the first two tracks, had been bandmates of Bloomfield's in the band Electric Flag, which also featured drummer Buddy Miles. The tune again sounds out of place, and Still's guitar is nowhere to be found.

The bonus tracks are valuable on this disc, to hear more of Bloomfield's playing, and to hear both Stills and Bloomfield's guitar work without the distraction of the brassy overdubs. These artists have abundant skills that deserve to be displayed, not dressed up, or God forbid, hidden. In the liner notes Kooper talks about his perception that the `naked' tracks were "dynamically impaired", hence the original decision to `enhance' them. Despite his perception, this seems to me to be a clear case of less being more.

So while you may be hitting the `skip' button once or twice while taking in this CD, there is a great deal of unique and wonderful late-1960's music to be had on this, the first and perhaps greatest `jam session'.

More Super Session free music reviews:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Description of Super Session

Those familiar with the Live Adventures album these two recorded at the Fillmore West know how brilliant they could be on stage, and here's another gem, recorded at the Fillmore East this time and featuring 'One Way Out,' 'It's My Own Fault' (with Bloomfield trading licks with Johnny Winter...Johnny was signed to Columbia after this gig!). Newly remastered & now with 4 bonus tracks, 'Albert's Shuffle' (2002 Remix w/o Horns), 'Season of the Witch.' (2002 Remix w/o Horns), 'Blues For Nothing' (Studio Outtake) & 'Fat Grey Cloud' Previously Unreleased Live Track). Features 12-page booklet with unpublished photos from the recording session, new liner notes by Al Kooper & the Rolling Stone Hall Of Fame review by David Fricke. 60 scintillating minutes! 13 tracks. Colunbia/Legacy. 2003.

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