“Spinning Wheel” (Blood, Sweat & Tears)

It’s day number two of horn rock week and today’s classic horn rock song of the day is “Spinning Wheel” by Blood, Sweat & Tears. This classic track perfectly blended jazz and rock aesthetics and peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart) in July of 1969. It was nominated for three Grammy Awards and won one, for Best Instrumental Arrangement. (The group’s sax player, Fred Lipsius, did that award-winning arrangement.) The other two nominations were for Record of the Year and Song of the Year, for which “Spinning Wheel” lost out to the 5th Dimension’s “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” and Joe South’s “Games People Play,” respectively. The group’s self-named album, Blood, Sweat & Tears (sometimes referred to as “BS&T 2”), won the Grammy for Album of the Year.

“Spinning Wheel,” which was written by the group’s vocalist, David Clayton-Thomas, was itself the consummate blend of jazz and rock sensibilities. The main part of the tune is some funky rock with horns on top, albeit with a bit of swing to the beat from drummer Bobby Colomby and bassist Jim Fielder. Then there’s the instrumental bridge, which lets trumpeter Lew Soloff solo over some straight ahead jazz, before returning to the rock groove for the last part of the track.

Before all that, leading into the second verse, is the best one-bar drum fill in all recorded history. Listen closely, fellow babies, as Bobby Colomby throws in some tom accents and an off-beat six-stroke roll that is tasty as hell. That fill gets me every time. It’s rock, it’s jazz, it’s two, two genres in one!

Blood, Sweat & Tears were formed in 1967 by ex-Blues Projecters Al Kooper and Steve Katz, with fellow New Yorkers Jim Fielder, Fred Lipsius, Randy Brecker, Jerry Weiss, Dick Halligan, and drummer Bobby Colomby along for the ride. Their first album, Child is Father to the Man, made some waves but kind of sounded like an Al Kooper solo album with horns—although there are some die-hards who insist that that first album was the only true BS&T album and everything after was just watered-down crap. (I happen to think those people are wrong and that it’s the first Al Kooper-led album that was the anomaly.)

In any case, Child is Father to the Man won the approval of the critics but didn’t make much of a mark in terms of sales or airplay. That muted reception, along with bitter infighting amongst the musicians, led to the group kicking Mr. Kooper to the curb. In his stead they auditioned a lot of different vocalists, including the ultra-talented Laura Nyro (who would have been a very interesting choice), finally settling on Canadian singer David Clayton-Thomas. At the same time, the group added producer James William Guercio to the mix—and if you recall from yesterday’s Classic Song of the Day (“Don’t You Care” by the Buckinghams), it’s Mr. Guercio who was the real proponent of the burgeoning jazz rock sound.

In 1968 the reformed group, with Mr. Guercio producing, released their award-winning second album, and the first without Mr. Kooper. Blood, Sweat & Tears, as the album was titled, featured the big hits everybody knows, including “Spinning Wheel,” “And When I Die,” and “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy.” This legendary album, along with the next two (BS&T 3 and BS&T 4) did a great job balancing the group’s competing jazz and rock factions and helped to define the sound we now call jazz rock or horn rock.

Bitter infighting continued, however, as it often does, with the main rifts between the group’s jazz and rock factions. (The same conflicts occurred in a lot of jazz rock bands, Chicago being a notable example.) The jazzers actually got the upper hand, resulting in a lot of artsy fartsy instrumental stuff that led to David Clayton-Thomas leaving the band after the release of BS&T 4.

It also didn’t help that BS&T were forced by the U.S. State Department to go on a tour of Eastern Europe in 1970, at the height of raging anti-government and anti-Nixon sentiment among the young people of the time. I say “forced” because the government basically told the group that if they didn’t go, it would deport Canadian David Clayton-Thomas back to his homeland, where he had a criminal record. Faced with losing their star lead singer or playing a few weeks in Communist Europe, the band chose the latter, which caused them to lose a lot of cred with their liberal audience. (The whole shebang is detailed in a just-released documentary titled What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?, which looks very interesting and I’ll watch as soon as it gets to streaming.)

Clayton-Thomas left the band in 1972 and the remaining members hired vocalist Jerry Fisher for their next two albums, that year’s New Blood and 1973’s No Sweat. Both of these albums took the group more into the jazz direction, which I personally loved (New Blood is my favorite BS&T album) but didn’t help their mainstream popularity. Fisher left the group after No Sweat, replaced by vocalist Jerry LaCroix on 1974s’ Mirror Image, which really wasn’t very good. LaCroix left shortly after, which led to the triumphant return of David Clayton-Thomas for 1975’s New City. That album was pretty good and featured a stellar cover of Blues Image’s “Ride Captain Ride,” but even that couldn’t right the listing ship, and the group faded out from there.

At their peak, BS&T were the perfect jazz rock horn band, with David Clayton-Thomas’ bluesy, growling vocals sealing their unique sound. And I can’t say enough about Bobby Colomby’s drumming, which approached rock ‘n’ roll from a jazz perspective and inspired an entire generation of drummers. They were my favorite jazz rock band and the one that inspired me as both a drummer and an arranger. (I really love that combination of two trumpets, sax, and trombone—lots of fun colors to play with!)

Drummer and founder Bobby Colomby left the group after 1976’s Bob James-produced and heavily session musician augmented More Than Ever, which really didn’t sound much like a BS&T record. The band continued, with a different drummer, for 1977’s Brand New Day, which kind of sucked. After that things pretty much disintegrated, although Clayton-Thomas kept the name and filled the ranks with bunch of newcomers for 1980’s Nuclear Blues, which was really a Clayton-Thomas solo album under the BS&T moniker.

Not long after, Bobby Colomby, who had secured the rights to the band’s name, put together an official touring group under the BS&T label and forced Clayton-Thomas to go solo. (Colomby didn’t play with the new group, just collected royalties from all their performances.) That touring group, which has had a rotating roster of more than a hundred different members over the years, continues to perform throughout the country to this day. I hear they’re pretty good, but they’re not Blood, Sweat & Tears. Not really.

That’s probably more about Blood, Sweat & Tears than you wanted to know, but thanks for indulging me. The group is a personal favorite of mine and a big inspiration in what there was of my musical career. To this day I still find myself throwing a Bobby Colomby lick or two into my playing, which says something. To my ears, BS&T represented the quintessential mix of jazz and rock and will always have a hallowed place in my music collection.