Greatest Hits

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Blood, Sweat & Tears

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"What goes up...must come down," so the song says, and with Blood Sweat and Tears an era of jazz-rock fusion did both. These songs were standards in 1969 -- three hit #2 on the charts -- and introduced a new rock and roll style that Chicago softened and rolled into a hit-making machine throughout the 70s.

Lead singer David Clayton-Thomas rips through his material with a preacher's passion, especially Laura Nyro's "And When I Die," his own "Spinning Wheel," "Lucretia McEvil," and "Lisa, Listen to Me." But it's "Sometimes In Winter" and the two songs from the first, non-Clayton-Thomas album, "I Can't Quit Her," and "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know," that show how progressive this music was and could've been under original leader Al Kooper. Even so, this is an excellent sampler from a group which sincerely tried to bridge two generations of music.

As a fan of BS&T from the original days, but with no LP's of the band in my possession, I had been looking for a "best of" CD compilation when I came across this one on Amazon. The real excellence of the band is, in my opinion, due to the exemplary jazz chops showcased on so many of their songs, so I wanted to make sure this compilation was complete in that respect--in other words, containing full album cuts, rather than the shorter "radio" versions as played in the band's heyday...Two of the band's signature hits, "And When I Die" and "Spinning Wheel" are, alas, the SHORTER versions, missing the outstanding jazz breaks altogether. Not that that's bad, as BS&T's songs are so good that they defy editing; but these shorter versions just don't showcase the band to its fullest extent.

Thankfully, "God Bless The Child" DOES have it's jazzy interlude intact--an extraordinary example of BS&T at its best.

Granted, this is a "greatest hits" CD--hits based on radio play of the shorter versions. But it could have been a MAGNIFICENT collection if it had included the longer, complete versions of all the songs. As it is, it's "merely" better-than-good.