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Wow. The very first concert I ever took my wife (then girlfriend) to was Blood, Sweat & Tears at the San Diego Sports Arena. Listening to the songs on this 'greatest hits' collection took me instantly back to some very good times in my life. What a great group. Great memories. A great collection of music. Singer David Clayton Thomas had such a distinctive voice and that dynamic brass section.
This is a great CD. Blood Sweat & Tears - Greatest HitsThis purchase was a gift for my brother for Christmas and I own this CD myself.
It should be in any collection. This is a compilation of the best. When I first heard David Clayton Thomas and BS&T, I thought what a unique sound and so enjoyable. Years have passed and I lost the album but through the magic of digitation they have returned and I am so glad that they did.
These guys had chops to burn, with the soul of "Hi De Ho" (a Carole King/Gerry Goffin song) and Laura Nyro's "And When I Die" working their turf perfectly, and the horns on "Lucretia Mac Evil" having the punch of electric guitars. Among the non-hits, both Steve Katz' "Sometimes In Winter" and Kooper's "I Can't Quit Her" are superb. Still, all this would be less interesting without the rotating stable of players' musicianship. Originally a brainchild of Al Kooper, Blood Sweat and Tears was one of those hybrids that could have only evolved in the experiment happy late 60's. Even though some of the songs are the single edits (missing the carousel breakdown at the end of "Spinning Wheel" is disappointing), these are still landmark songs, and a style that would soon become omnipresent from every from The Best Of Chicago to Brian Setzer. Canadian David Clayton-Thomas brought in a soul-full force that made singles like "Spinning Wheel" and "You Made Me So Very Happy" into classics.Clayton-Thomas also brought solid songs to the band, as the writer of four of the main hits here. Welding a big band brass to rock sensibilities, BS&T hit their stride once they found a singer whose voice was a brassy as their horn section. But BS&T were also eclectic enough to search outside the box; their cover of Billie Holiday's "God Bless The Child" stands among their best work.
To serious fans, it's sort of Blood, Sweat & Tears-lite, but to millions of listeners, it's these shorter versions, shorn of their extended album-version breaks, by which they know the band best. The new release also re-creates the packaging of the original LP, with reviewers' quotes across the band's prime years (1968-72) and a time line history, as well as release and production information on each song. This disc is no substitute for the Mastersounds version of the Child Is Father to the Man album, or the Mobile Fidelity version of Blood, Sweat and Tears, but it is a really smart idea. And those numbers now sport state-of-the-art sound -- hard, up-front bass and drums, horns that pour out of the speakers, and close and intimate singing from David Clayton-Thomas (or, on the two BS&T Mark 1 tracks here, Al Kooper and Steve Katz). The two additional numbers bring the running time up to 48 minutes, and it's mid-priced, too, which makes it even easier to junk the old version and get hold of this one. Columbia-Legacy went back and recompiled this multi-million selling album (previously available as a fairly lackluster 40-minute, 11-song CD), adding two songs ("So Long Dixie" and "More and More,") that were previously available only on singles from 1972 and 1968, respectively, and upgrading the sound. What distinguishes Blood, Sweat & Tears' Greatest Hits from the double-CD Sony-Legacy compilation What Goes Up: The Best of Blood, Sweat & Tears, however, is that this disc uses the single edits of the hits.
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