Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper and Steve Stills
Super Session

Los Angeles, 1968. Kooper, Bloomfield and company in a smoky little room that smells of carpet and extinguished cigarette butts. Am I exaggerating?! "The best things always happen by chance" reads, more or less, on the back cover, and perhaps that’s exactly how it is.

Alan Kooper, raised on soul, blues, and R&B, has played, recorded, and produced just about everything since the late '50s, with simplicity and, above all, with class. He contributed to that explosion of musical creativity between the '60s and '70s and traversed through all the chatter that followed that great era while playing. By the time of this album's recording, he had already accompanied Bob Dylan’s electric turn and had been part of the Blues Project, one of the best live machines of those years. He was (co-)author, organist, pianist, and vocalist of the Blood, Sweat & Tears experiment long before Clayton-Thomas’s brass and big voice overshadowed everything, hinting at what could have been, and was not. And one day in May '68, he likely thought of recording something when he called his friend Michael Bloomfield, who was already part of Dylan's electric ensemble and the light of the first two (wonderful) albums by the Butterfield Blues Band. A guitarist as talented as he was sensitive and delicate, with quick, articulate, very personal phrasing. The other attendees were Eddie Hoh on drums, Barry Goldberg on piano, and Harvey Brooks on electric bass, the latter two having come from the unfortunate experience of Electric Flag, like Bloomfield.

What you can hear from this strange mix is all on the first side, resulting from the first 9 hours of session, in which our guys put together an inspired and elegant 'white' blues-soul with, in random order, "Albert’s Shuffle", "Really", and the Kooper-Organ-raga-psychedelic river of "His Holy Modal Majesty" along with the incredibly sweet "Man’s Temptation" by Curtis Mayfield and the blues ecstasy of "Stop" (Ragavoy).
It seems, however, that on the morning of the second recording day, the spontaneous Bloomfield, debilitated by severe insomnia (and heroin) issues, left a nice note saying something like "Dear Alan, I didn’t sleep well, I went home. Sorry. Mike." So, it’s Stephen Stills's wah-wah-folk-blues guitar that occupies the second side, continuing with the distorted "It Takes A Lot To Cry..." (Dylan) and "Season Of The Witch" (Donovan), approached with the interpretative freedom (and dynamics care) of a jazz group improvising on standards. The record concludes with a hard-psychedelic version of "You Don't Love Me" (Willie Cobb) and "Harvey's Tune", the album’s most delicate piece, almost emphasizing the full range of emotions this album still manages to offer.

There are countless reasons why it’s worth listening to and re-listening to this record. First of all, the infinite inspiration that emerges from every note, something rarely heard. Then, because everything is distilled with a subtlety of manners and forms that often leaves one breathless. And then there’s the class of the musicians, Bloomfield with his head in the clouds and Al Kooper’s sardonic grin in New York hippie gear, more focused on the notes than on the flowers or LSD... um, than on the flowers.