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Rating: When I almost casually bought this album for the modest price of 5 euros, I would never have remotely imagined finding myself holding another fundamental piece of late Sixties "made in USA" Rock music: in fact, this album titled Super Session, released in August 1968, undoubtedly represents the “sum” of another of those musical branches that will take flight in this period: the so-called Blues Revival.
The album is divided into two sides, the first of which features the nearly unrivaled figures of Al Kooper (New York, February 5, 1944), a renowned and highly respected keyboardist/singer/multi-instrumentalist/producer, both as a collaborator for high-profile artists like Bob Dylan on his pivotal 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited and as a discoverer of new talents (primarily that of a 19-year-old Carlos Santana, coming from the ever-vibrant Californian crucible, officially inaugurated in the piece Sonny Boy Williamson from the album Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield & Al Kooper in 1969), as well as a member of the blues ensemble Blood, Sweat & Tears, and blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield (Chicago, July 28, 1943 – San Francisco, February 15, 1981), coming from that “creative melting pot” that was mid-1960s Chicago, the main hub of the aforementioned “Blues Revival,” also a very renowned sessionman for Dylan (again on Highway 61 Revisited) and American bluesman Paul Butterfield (from which the famous The Paul Butterfield Band) and a prominent member of the supergroup The Electric Flag, from which also comes bassist Harvey Brooks (another key collaborator of Dylan) and finally, the young little-known drummer Eddie Hoh.
This first part is thus characterized by an instrumental “battle” between Kooper’s keyboards and horn arrangements and Bloomfield’s guitar, always as sharp and hot as a katana, starting from the initial Albert’s Shuffle, which highlights this aspect with its equally divided tempo between the “contenders.” Stop is an excellent blues cover by J. Ragovoy, as is the following Man’s Temptation by Curtis Mayfield, where the eclectic Kooper’s voice particularly stands out. However, the best instrumental piece of the first side is the subsequent His Holy Modal Majesty, where the “bare-knuckle” showdown between Kooper’s keyboards and Bloomfield’s roaring guitar is renewed, with the latter drawing well-placed notes and scales from his beloved Gibson Les Paul (Gold version) like slashes on the sound fabric masterfully crafted by the always impeccable New York composer.
The second side, forcibly imposed by Bloomfield’s precarious psychophysical conditions (suffering from insomnia but already prey to those heroin excesses that would unfortunately lead to his death in 1981), features the no less important figure of Steve (Stephen) Stills (Dallas, January 3, 1945), a talented guitarist/bassist/singer/composer from the Texan-Californian music scene and a prominent former member of the famous American folk/rock band Buffalo Springfield (and future architect with David Crosby and Graham Nash of the namesake trio Crosby, Stills & Nash, also triumphing at Woodstock in 1969) who will push the album’s sound towards blatantly Country/Rock settings, but with numerous references to the psychedelic trend.
This is demonstrated by the cover of the Dylan song It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Lot To Cry, also from Highway 61 Revisited, which stands out especially for the imposing rhythmic base imposed by Hoh and Brooks and the brief, but incisive country/rock solos (obtained with his Rickenbacker) by Stills. But the highest peaks in terms of artistic inventiveness are reached with Season Of The Witch, a cover of Bob Dylan’s “alter-ego” Donovan, which in the aforementioned version reaches very high levels of creativity: in this track, thanks to the penetrating keyboard (and Hammond organ) incursions by Kooper and Stills’ wah-wah guitar here in a, let’s say, “demonic” version, there’s a journey into the darkest psychedelia where more “calm” moments alternate with sound explosions, almost akin to those of an active volcano!
The same emotional rate is maintained in You Don’t Love Me, a piece previously “covered” in John Mayall’s album A Hard Road (1967), which features the introduction of the harpsichord (also used earlier by Hendrix in his Bold As Love, from the album of the same name in December 1967) and where Stills’ guitar once again shines, fully aware of his truly excellent artistic means.
Therefore, in this album, the studio-reproduced and packaged “session” formula becomes so popular that it pushes Kooper/Bloomfield to try again, with equally good results, in the subsequent The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield & Al Kooper in 1969, thus leading to a substantial revitalization of the early Blues genre, here "embellished" by the presence of electric instrumentation, the result of the sagacity and passion of such prominent artists in the genre, just like Kooper and Bloomfield.
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