Today’s classic horn rock (or, if you prefer, jazz-rock) song of the day is “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” by Blood, Sweat & Tears. This was their mainstream breakthrough single; released in March of 1969, it shot all the way to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Blood, Sweat & Tears was formed two years earlier by singer/keyboardist Al Kooper and guitarist Steve Katz, just out of the Blues Project. They hooked up in New York with drummer Bobby Colomby and bassist Jim Fielder, added some first-call horn players, workshopped some of Kooper’s original songs and some stellar covers (from Tim Buckley, Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, and Carole King and Gerry Goffin), and released their first album, Child is Father to the Man, in early 1968. That album was widely acclaimed by critics everywhere but didn’t sell that well.
The low sales of that first album plus roiling internal conflicts caused the rest of the band to force out Mr. Kooper and bring on Canadian David Clayton-Thomas as lead singer. The revamped band put out their second album, titled simply Blood, Sweat & Tears, in late 1968. That album was a monster, hitting #1 on Billboard’s album chart and spawning three hit singles: “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” “Spinning Wheel,” and a captivating cover of Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die.” It not only put them on the map, it made them bona fide superstars capable of headlining at Woodstock. (Which they did.)
“You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” was originally a Motown tune, written by Brenda Holloway, her little sister Patrice Holloway, ace songsmith Frank Wilson, and Berry Gordy Jr himself. It was released by Brenda Holloway on the Tamla label in August of 1967 and broke into the Top 40, hitting #39 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The BS&T version kept many of the same elements as Ms. Holloway’s original. The group actually got into the song when Al Kooper was still in the group but it didn’t come together until after he left. His replacement, David Clayton-Thomas, remembers this about the tune:
“They had tried it with Al Kooper and they weren’t happy with the vocals, so they never did record it. Then up at Bobby Colomby’s place one day, he was playing me a bunch of stuff that they had been considering, and I heard ‘You’ve Made Me So Very Happy.’ I said, ‘Whoa, who’s that? That’s Brenda Holloway! I know that song!’ So we did the chart and it went into the show, and we played it down at the club, and we ran up in the studio and recorded it.”
I’ve written before about the rise of horn rock and BS&T’s place in that history. They’re my favorite jazz-rock group and a big influence on both my drumming (thank you, Bobby Colomby!) and my arranging. Unfortunately, the horn rock era was short lived but, while it was around, there was some terrific stuff out there.
And here’s your daily bonus video of the day, Blood, Sweat & Tears performing “You’ve Make Me So Very Happy” live in Stockholm in 1971. As this clip shows, the band was even better live than they were on record; they got to show off more of their jazz chops on stage, which (to me anyway) was a real plus. Enjoy!
