“Beginnings” (Chicago)

It’s day number three of horn rock week and today’s classic jazz rock song of the day is “Beginnings” by Chicago, arguably the most popular of the horn rock bands of the late 1960s/early 1970s. This one is from their very first self-titled album when the band still called themselves Chicago Transit Authority.

“Beginnings” was first released as a single back in 1969, when the Chicago Transit Authority album hit the shelves, but it failed to chart. After the band had a few subsequently successful singles (“Make Me Smile,” “25 or 6 to 4,” “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?,” “Free,” and “Lowdown”) they decided to re-release “Beginnings” as the A side of a single, with “Colour My World” on the B side, in June of 1971. That single became a two-sided hit, reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. “Beginnings” alone reached #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart and #8 in Canada.

The track is typical of early period Chicago (their best period, IMHO), full of Danny Seraphine’s driving drums and lots of interesting horn licks. No electric guitar on this one, though; Terry Kath played 12-string acoustic, instead. The tune was written and sung by keyboardist Robert Lamm. “Beginnings” is one of my favorite Chicago tunes, and one I arranged (with my friend Mark Shaffer) for our ongoing jazz-rock band back when we were in junior high.

The band Chicago started out in the city of Chicago, naturally, with the original moniker of the Chicago Transit Authority. Producer James William Guercio (who also produced the Buckinghams and Blood, Sweat & Tears, cementing his status as Godfather of the jazz rock movement) convinced them to shorten their name after protests by the Windy City’s real CTA. Their first several albums were all doubles and (after the first) all numbered with Roman numerals, and they kind of approached jazz from a rock perspective. (As opposed to BS&T, who did rock from a jazz perspective, or so I’d argue.)

By the way, I am of the considered opinion that Chicago had two really good albums (1969’s CTA and 1970s’ Chicago II) then very quickly went downhill. Chicago III (1971) had some decent spots but was a bloated mess, as was 1971’s Chicago Live at Carnegie Hall (AKA Chicago IV), then the band entered bland pleasantness with 1972’s Chicago V and subsequent albums. I mean, compare “Beginnings” and “25 or 6 to 4” from the first two albums with “Saturday in the Park” from Chicago V; it’s like they’re from different bands.

Chicago VI (1973) and VII (1974) saw Chicago’s full descent into mellow adult contemporary crap, “Just You ‘n’ Me” and “Feelin’ Stronger Every Day” being prime examples from VI. Then there’s the execrable “(I’ve Been) Searchin’ So Long” and “Wishing You Were Here” from VII, with the nadir being on 1976’s Chicago X and 1977’s XI and the nauseating but commercially popular tunes “If You Leave Me Now” and “Baby What a Big Surprise.” Blech.

By this point in time, the band’s roots as a mix of hard charging rockers and experimental jazzers had been totally subsumed by Peter Cetera’s somnambulistic synth-driven easy listening noodlings. Give me that early tension between rock and jazz, driven by Terry Kath’s powerful guitar licks and Danny Seraphine’s fun fills on his Slingerland kit, any day. (That said, I still preferred Blood, Sweat & Tears to Chicago, as their mix favored the jazz side just a tinch more; Chicago, in those years, sounded more like a rock band that added horns, while BS&T were a bunch of jazzers trying to play rock.)

Despite my protests, it’s true that Chicago is the only jazz rock band to make it out of the ’70s and continue to this day. Their best hits were monster mixes of Terry Kath’s heavy rock guitar and the horn trio’s punchy jazz/R&B riffs, all backed by Danny Seraphine’s driving yet jazz-tinged beat. They were at the top of their form when the horns took a supportive role to Kath’s blistering guitar lines. (Kath was one of the unsung guitar heroes of his time.) They were a killer live band before they started drowning in adult contemporariness.

Chicago took a further downward turn when they kicked out drummer Danny Seraphine who, along with BS&T’s Bobby Colomby, had been an inspiration to that generation of drummers. Minus Kath (who died way too young in 1978) and Seraphine, the band took the easy route of easy listening music, softening their harder edges and abandoning anything remotely out of the mainstream. It proved to be a successful strategy, however, as the newly emasculated Chicago scored 15 top twenty hits (including the number-one hits “If You Leave Me Now,” “Hard to Say I’m Sorry,” and “Look Away”) after the release of Chicago X in 1976. Sigh.

Of the original group, only keyboardist/vocalist Robert Lamm, trumpeter Lee Loughnane, and trombonist James Pankow still remain; anybody else playing with “Chicago” these days are replacements of replacements of replacements. As noted, guitarist Terry Kath died of an accidental gunshot wound in 1978, just 31 years of age. Bassist/vocalist Peter Cetera left the band in 1985 and subsequently had a very successful solo career; he officially retired from the music business in 2019. After being tossed out of the band in 1990, drummer Danny Seraphine kicked around a bit but eventually put together a tribute band dubbed California Transit Authority that still plays the old songs today. Sax player Walter Parazaider stayed with Chicago until 2017 and has since been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. Producer James William Guercio, who was instrumental in Chicago’s success (and the success of the entire horn rock genre), got fed up with both Chicago and the music business; he got into cattle ranching for awhile, then oil and gas exploration, then purchased (and subsequently sold for an enormous profit) the Country Music Television (CMT) channel. He’s still alive today, aged 77.