''Super Session'' is an album by

Al Kooper Al Kooper (born Alan Peter Kuperschmidt; February 5, 1944) is a retired American songwriter, record producer and musician, known for organizing Blood, Sweat & Tears, although he did not stay with the group long enough to share its popularity. ...

, with guitarists

Mike Bloomfield Michael Bernard Bloomfield (July 28, 1943 – February 15, 1981) was an American guitarist and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his ...

on the first half and

Stephen Stills Stephen Arthur Stills (born January 3, 1945) is an American musician, singer and songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. As both a solo act and member of two successful bands, Stills has com ...

on the second half of the album. Released by

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...

in 1968, it peaked at No. 12 on the ''Billboard'' 200 during a 37-week chart stay and was

certified gold Music recording certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped, sold, or streamed a certain number of units. The threshold quantity varies by type (such as album, single, music video) and by nation or territory (see ...

RIAA The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...

Background

and

had previously worked together on the sessions for the ground-breaking classic ''

Highway 61 Revisited ''Highway 61 Revisited'' is the sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on August 30, 1965, by Columbia Records. Having until then recorded mostly acoustic music, Dylan used rock musicians as his backing band on ever ...

'' by

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...

, as well as playing in support of his controversial appearance at the

Newport Folk Festival Newport Folk Festival is an annual American folk-oriented music festival in Newport, Rhode Island, which began in 1959 as a counterpart to the Newport Jazz Festival. It was one of the first modern music festivals in America, and remains a foca ...

in July 1965. Kooper had recently left

Blood, Sweat & Tears Blood, Sweat & Tears (also known as "BS&T") is a jazz rock music group founded in New York City in 1967, noted for a combination of brass with rock instrumentation. In addition to original music, the group has performed popular songs by Laura Ny ...

after recording their debut album with them, and was now working as an

A&R man Artists and repertoire (colloquially abbreviated to A&R) is the division of a record label or music publishing company that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists (singers, instrumentalist ...

for Columbia. Bloomfield was about to leave

Electric Flag The Electric Flag was an American soul rock band, led by guitarist Mike Bloomfield, keyboardist Barry Goldberg and drummer Buddy Miles, and featuring other musicians such as vocalist Nick Gravenites and bassist Harvey Brooks. Bloomfield f ...

, and at relative loose end. Kooper telephoned Bloomfield to see if he was free to come down to the studio and jam; Bloomfield agreed, leaving Kooper to handle the arrangements. Kooper booked two days of studio time at

CBS Columbia Square CBS Columbia Square (also called Columbia Studio) was the home of CBS's Los Angeles radio and television operations from 1938 until 2007. Located at 6121 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, the building housed the CBS Radio Network's West Coast facil ...

in May 1968, and recruited keyboardist

Barry Goldberg Barry Joseph Goldberg (born December 25, 1942) is an American blues and rock keyboardist, songwriter, and record producer. Goldberg has co-produced albums by Percy Sledge, Charlie Musselwhite, James Cotton, and the Textones, plus Bob Dylan's ve ...

and bassist Harvey Brooks, both members of the Electric Flag, along with well-known session drummer "Fast"

Eddie Hoh Edward Hoh (October 16, 1944 – November 7, 2015) was an American rock drummer who was active in the 1960s. Although primarily a studio session and touring drummer, Hoh exhibited a degree of originality and showmanship that set him apart and se ...

. On the first day, the quintet recorded a group of mostly

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

-based instrumental tracks. It included the modal excursion "His Holy Modal Majesty", which was a tribute to

modal jazz Modal jazz is jazz that makes use of musical modes, often modulating among them to accompany the chords instead of relying on one tonal center used across the piece. Although precedents exist, modal jazz was crystallized as a theory by compose ...

musician

John Coltrane John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of br ...

, who had died the previous year, and was also reminiscent of "East-West" from the second Butterfield Blues Band album. On the second day, with the tapes ready to roll, Bloomfield returned to his home in

Mill Valley, California Mill Valley is a city in Marin County, California, Marin County, California, United States, located about north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge and from Napa Valley. The population was 14,231 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 ...

, saying he had been unable to sleep. Needing to have something to show for the second day of booked studio time, Kooper hastily called upon

, also in the process of leaving his band,

Buffalo Springfield Buffalo Springfield was a rock band formed in Los Angeles by Canadian musicians Neil Young, Bruce Palmer and Dewey Martin and American musicians Stephen Stills and Richie Furay. The group, widely known for the song "For What It's Worth", rele ...

, to replace Bloomfield. Regrouping behind Stills, Kooper's session men cut mostly vocal tracks, including "

It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" is a song written by Bob Dylan, that was originally released on his album ''Highway 61 Revisited''. It was recorded on July 29, 1965. The song was also included on an early, European Dylan compilat ...

" from ''Highway 61'' and a lengthy and atmospheric take of " Season of the Witch" by

Donovan Donovan Phillips Leitch (born 10 May 1946), known mononymously as Donovan, is a Scottish musician, songwriter, and record producer. He developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelic rock and world mus ...

. Although Harvey Brooks's closing "Harvey's Tune" includes overdubbed horns added in New York City while the album was being mixed, the album only cost $13,000 to complete. The success of the album opened the door for the "

supergroup Supergroup or super group may refer to: * Supergroup (music), a music group formed by artists who are already notable or respected in their fields * Supergroup (physics), a generalization of groups, used in the study of supersymmetry * Supergroup ...

" concept of the late 1960s and 1970s, as exemplified by the likes of

Blind Faith Blind Faith were an English supergroup featuring Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Ric Grech. They were eagerly anticipated by the music press following on the success of each of the member's former bands, including Clapton a ...

and

Crosby, Stills & Nash Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN) were a folk rock supergroup made up of American singer-songwriters David Crosby and Stephen Stills and English singer-songwriter Graham Nash. When joined by Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young as a fourth member ...

. Kooper forgave Bloomfield, and the two of them made several concert appearances after the album was released. The results of one of those became the album ''

The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper ''The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper'' is a double album recorded at the Fillmore West venue; the album is a successor to the studio album ''Super Session'', which included Stephen Stills in addition to Bloomfield and Kooper, an ...

''.SuiteLorraine.com

Releases

Along with the stereo version, ''Super Session'' was released as a 4-channel

quadraphonic Quadraphonic (or quadrophonic and sometimes quadrasonic) sound – equivalent to what is now called 4.0 surround sound – uses four audio channels in which speakers are positioned at the four corners of a listening space. The system allows for th ...

version in the 1970s. The quadraphonic version was released on SQ matrix encoded vinyl and discrete

8-track cartridge The 8-track tape (formally Stereo 8; commonly called eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, and eight-track) is a magnetic tape sound recording technology that was popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when the compact cassette, whi ...

tape. On April 8, 2003,

Legacy Records In law, a legacy is something held and transferred to someone as their inheritance, as by will and testament. Personal effects, family property, marriage property or collective property gained by will of real property. Legacy or legacies may refer ...

reissued the album on

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then rele ...

with four bonus tracks, including both an

outtake An outtake is a portion of a work (usually a film or music recording) that is removed in the editing process and not included in the work's final, publicly released version. In the digital era, significant outtakes have been appended to CD and D ...

and a live track with Bloomfield, and two with the horn overdubs mixed out. In the early 2000s, it was intended that it would be remixed for the new 5.1 channel version to be released on

SACD Super Audio CD (SACD) is an optical disc format for audio storage introduced in 1999. It was developed jointly by Sony and Philips, Philips Electronics and intended to be the successor to the Compact Disc (CD) format. The SACD format allows mul ...

. But in late 2004, Al Kooper commented: Both 5.1 remixed SACDs were finally released in 2014 by Audio Fidelity.

Critical reception

Track listing

2003 CD reissue

Personnel

vocals, piano,

Hammond organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated s ...

Ondioline The Ondioline is an electronic keyboard musical instrument, developed and built by Frenchman Georges Jenny. Sometimes referred to as the "Jenny Ondioline," the instrument is considered a forerunner of the synthesizer. First conceived by Jenny i ...

, electric guitar, twelve-string guitar *

electric guitar on side one, reissue tracks 10, 12, 13 *

electric guitar on side two, reissue track 11 *

electric piano on "Albert's Shuffle" and "Stop" * Harvey Brooksbass guitar *

drums, percussion Additional personnel *

Horn section A horn section is a group of musicians playing horns. In an orchestra or concert band, it refers to the musicians who play the "French" horn, and in a British-style brass band it is the tenor horn players. In many popular music genres, the te ...

unknown session players; arranged by Al Kooper and Joe Scott * Fred Catero,

Roy Halee Roy Decker Halee (born 1934) is an American record producer and engineer, best known for working with Simon & Garfunkel, both as a group and for their solo projects. Early life He grew up on Long Island, New York. His father, also named Roy ...

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

* Martin Greenblattdigital mastering

Charts

Certification

References

{{Authority control 1968 debut albums Al Kooper albums Columbia Records albums Stephen Stills albums Mike Bloomfield albums Albums produced by Al Kooper