''Chicago Transit Authority'' is the debut album by the Chicago-based
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
band
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
(then known as Chicago Transit Authority). It was recorded and released in 1969 and became a
sleeper hit
In the entertainment industry, a sleeper hit is a film, television series, music release, video game, or some other entertainment product that was initially unsuccessful on release but became a success later on. A sleeper hit may have little prom ...
, reaching number 17 on the
''Billboard'' 200 by 1971 and spawning several successful singles, including "
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?", "
Questions 67 and 68
"Questions 67 and 68" is a 1969 song written by Robert Lamm for the rock band Chicago (then known as Chicago Transit Authority) and recorded for their debut album ''Chicago Transit Authority''. It was their first single release. Peter Cetera is th ...
" and "
Beginnings
Beginnings may refer to:
Literature
* ''Beginnings'' (collection), a 1988 collection of short stories and poems by Gordon R. Dickson
* ''Beginnings'' (Honorverse), a 2013 collection of short stories in the Worlds of Honor series
* ''Beginnings ...
". The album stayed on the ''Billboard'' chart for 171 weeks,
beating the previous record for a rock album's longevity of 155 weeks
and has been certified double
platinum
Platinum is a chemical element with the symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name originates from Spanish , a diminutive of "silver".
Pla ...
by the
Recording Industry Association of America (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 ...
.
For this inaugural recording effort the group was nominated for a
Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pr ...
for 1969
Best New Artist of the Year.
The album was inducted into the
Grammy Hall of Fame
The Grammy Hall of Fame is a hall of fame to honor musical recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance. Inductees are selected annually by a special member committee of eminent and knowledgeable professionals from all branches of ...
in 2014.
History
Chicago was formed in early 1967, first as the Big Thing, then Chicago Transit Authority when producer
James William Guercio
James William Guercio (born July 18, 1945) is an American music producer, musician, songwriter, and director. He is well known for his work as the producer of Chicago's early albums as well as early recordings of The Buckinghams and Blood, Sweat ...
took them on in 1968. Their trademark was fusing brass and
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
with a soulful
rock and roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It originated from African-American music such as jazz, rhythm a ...
feel that Guercio thought would prove successful, lobbying for his label to sign the band.
Chicago Transit Authority signed to
Columbia Records late in 1968 and recorded their first album in late January 1969 at CBS studios on 52nd Street in New York City.
While Guercio had recently produced
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 N ...
'
second album (which proved to be a huge smash), he did so to raise capital for his band, and to secure the contract with Columbia (which was reluctant at first to have two jazz-rock bands since Blood, Sweat & Tears was already on their roster).
By the end of the ''Chicago Transit Authority'' sessions, the band had decided they wanted it to be a
double album. Skeptical, as the band had no track record, Columbia agreed to the concept only if the group would take a royalty cut.
In addition to the material recorded for the album, "Wake Up Sunshine", "It Better End Soon" (both later released on
their second album), "Loneliness is Just a Word" (later released on ''
Chicago III
''Chicago III'' is the third studio album by American rock band Chicago and was released in 1971. It was the band's third consecutive double album of new studio material in less than two years.
Background
In the wake of the enormous worldwid ...
''), and an early version of "Mississippi Delta City Blues" (with mostly different music than its eventual versions on ''
Live in Japan'' and ''
Chicago XI
''Chicago XI'', released in 1977, is the ninth studio album (eleventh overall) by the American band Chicago and marked the end of an era for the band. This would be the last Chicago studio album to feature guitarist Terry Kath prior to his deat ...
'') all date from this era, and were performed as early as 1968. Other early original songs, such as "Dedicated to Girl Number 1" and "Once Upon a Life", were never released.
Released in April 1969, ''Chicago Transit Authority'' (sometimes informally referred to simply as "CTA") was not an immediate hit, eventually reaching No. 17 in the
US and No. 9 in the
UK.
While critical reaction was generally favorable, sales were slow at first and the album initially failed to produce any hit singles, with the group seen as an album-oriented collective. Meanwhile, FM radio, with its album-oriented format, helped push sales along. In 1970 and 1971, "
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" (No. 7),
"
Beginnings
Beginnings may refer to:
Literature
* ''Beginnings'' (collection), a 1988 collection of short stories and poems by Gordon R. Dickson
* ''Beginnings'' (Honorverse), a 2013 collection of short stories in the Worlds of Honor series
* ''Beginnings ...
" (No. 7)
and "
Questions 67 and 68
"Questions 67 and 68" is a 1969 song written by Robert Lamm for the rock band Chicago (then known as Chicago Transit Authority) and recorded for their debut album ''Chicago Transit Authority''. It was their first single release. Peter Cetera is th ...
" (No. 71 and No. 24 for the 1971 re-release)
all made it into the Billboard Hot 100 belatedly. Buoyed by the success of their later albums, ''Chicago Transit Authority'' had stayed on the charts for 171 weeks as of June 1975,
setting the then record for a rock album's chart longevity by October 1974 at 155 weeks,
and was certified
gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...
(and later platinum and double platinum) by the
Recording Industry Association of America (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 ...
.
While the band toured the album, legal action was threatened by the actual
Chicago Transit Authority
The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is the operator of mass transit in Chicago, Illinois, United States, and some of its surrounding suburbs, including the trains of the Chicago 'L' and CTA bus service. In , the system had a ridership of , ...
, forcing the group to truncate their name to simply ''Chicago''.
Musical style, writing, composition
Keyboardist
Robert Lamm
Robert William Lamm (born October 13, 1944) is an American keyboardist, guitarist, singer and songwriter best known as a founding member of the rock band Chicago. He wrote many of the band's biggest hits, including " Questions 67 & 68", "Does ...
, guitarist
Terry Kath
Terry Alan Kath (January 31, 1946 – January 23, 1978) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, best known as a founding member of the rock band Chicago. He played guitar and sang lead vocals on many of the band's early hit singl ...
and bassist
Peter Cetera
Peter Paul Cetera ( ; born September 13, 1944) is an American retired musician best known for being a lead vocalist and the bassist of the rock band Chicago from 1967 until his departure in 1985, before launching a successful solo career. His ...
shared lead vocals, while
James Pankow
James Carter Pankow is an American trombone player, songwriter and brass instrument player, best known as a founding member of the rock band Chicago.
Early life, family and education
Born in St. Louis, Missouri of German and Irish descent, Pa ...
,
Lee Loughnane
Lee David Loughnane (pronounced LOCK-nain; born October 21, 1946) is an American trumpeter, flugelhorn player, vocalist, and songwriter, best known for being a founding member of the rock band Chicago.
Early life and education
Lee David Loughna ...
and
Walter Parazaider
Walter Parazaider (born March 14, 1945) is an American woodwind musician best known for being a founding member of the rock band Chicago. He plays a wide variety of wind instruments, including saxophone, flute, and clarinet. He also occasionall ...
handled all brass and woodwinds (
trombone
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate ...
,
trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
and
saxophone
The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of Single-reed instrument, single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed (mouthpi ...
,
clarinet and
flute respectively) and
Danny Seraphine
Daniel Peter Seraphine (born August 28, 1948) is an American drummer, record producer, theatrical producer and film producer. He is best known as the original drummer and a founding member of the rock band Chicago, a tenure which lasted fr ...
played drums. (Parazaider is pictured in the album package playing flute, but doesn't actually play it on the album.) Band members added percussion during sections of a song when they weren't playing their main instrument. For example, on "I'm a Man", Pankow was on cowbell, Parazaider on tambourine, and Loughnane on claves.
Lamm, Kath and Pankow were the band's main composers at this time. According to the band's producer, James William Guercio,
Jimi Hendrix was an avowed fan of Kath's playing.
According to the album's original liner notes, the solo performance of Kath on "Free Form Guitar" was created without the use of any pedals.
In a nod to Hendrix's guitar expressionism (Hendrix most notably used wah and fuzz pedals), Kath instead plugged directly into his studio amplifier and improvised the entire track in one take for the purpose of pure tone.
"Free Form Guitar" was an influence on the genre of
noise music.
The album is one of two not to have any songwriting contributions from Cetera during his tenure in the band, the other being ''
Chicago V''. He started writing songs with the second album, ''
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
''.
Recording and production
Because of dealings between the recording company and the group's producer, James William Guercio, the group's studio time was limited to only five days of basic tracking and five days of overdubbing by the recording company.
According to Guercio, the album was "done 8-track."
According to band member Walt Parazaider, when the group went into the studio to record the album, they " 'found out we knew very little about what we were doing. ... The first song was “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” We tried to record it as a band, live, all of us in the studio at once.' "
Finally it was decided that drums, bass, keyboard, and guitars would be recorded first, and then the horns and vocals.
Artwork
The cover design for the album is called "Painted Shingle" on the group's official web site. The inside jacket features individual photos of each band member, which reviewer Peter Morelli notes, "For a band deliberately constructed to be a leaderless democracy, Robert Lamm (far right, standing) sure stands out in the band photos!"
Reissues
In 1974, the album was also mixed in quadraphonic sound and released on SQ encoded LP (GQ-33255) and Dolby Quadraphonic 8-Track (QCA-33255).
In 2002, ''Chicago Transit Authority'' was remastered and reissued on one
CD by
Rhino Records
A rhinoceros (; ; ), commonly abbreviated to rhino, is a member of any of the five extant species (or numerous extinct species) of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. (It can also refer to a member of any of the extinct species ...
and
Columbia Records.
Rhino Records trimmed some of the songs, noticeably the fadeouts on "Questions #67 and #68" (six seconds longer on the LP) and "Free Form Guitar" (five seconds longer), the 10 second gap between "Someday" and "Liberation", and some studio chatter.
In 2010, Rhino Handmade re-released the original quadraphonic mix of the album on a limited edition DTS DVD, and in 2016, in DTS-HD Master Audio, as part of Chicago Quadio Box Set.
On June 26, 2019, Rhino Records announced a 50th Anniversary Remix edition of Chicago Transit Authority, offering it in both CD and double
LP formats. Although the press release announced an August 30, 2019 release date, the date was pushed back to September 13, 2019 outside of Canada. The band worked with engineer Tim Jessup, who also mixed the band’s ''Live at the Isle of Wight Festival.'' Robbie Gerson, reviewing the vinyl release for ''Audiophile Audition'', gave an overall positive review, saying, "Rhino has done an outstanding job in re-mastering ''Chicago Transit Authority'' to 180-gram vinyl." In his review for ''
All About Jazz
''All About Jazz'' is a website established by Michael Ricci in 1995. A volunteer staff publishes news, album reviews, articles, videos, and listings of concerts and other events having to do with jazz. Ricci maintains a related site, ''Jazz Near ...
'', Doug Colette gave the CD four out of five stars, noting that there's "less precedence for the harmony singing," but that there's "wallop to the drums," "edge to the guitar," and "great care throughout to highlight, without overstatement but with proportionate accuracy and impact, the tightly-fused rhythm work of drummer Danny Seraphine and bassist Peter Cetera: both sound equally vigorous and muscular in their playing."
Awards and honors
In 1969, the group was nominated for a
Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pr ...
for
Best New Artist
The Grammy Award for Best New Artist has been awarded since 1959. Years reflect the year in which the Grammy Awards were handed out, for records released in the previous year. The award was not presented in 1967. The official guidelines are as ...
.
In 2014, ''Chicago Transit Authority'' was inducted into the
Grammy Hall of Fame
The Grammy Hall of Fame is a hall of fame to honor musical recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance. Inductees are selected annually by a special member committee of eminent and knowledgeable professionals from all branches of ...
.
''Chicago Transit Authority'' is the only Chicago album listed in ''
1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
''1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die'' is a musical reference book first published in 2005 by Universe Publishing. Part of the ''1001 Before You Die'' series, it compiles writings and information on albums chosen by a panel of music critics ...
''.
Track listing
* One part of “South California Purples”’s lyrics consists of parts of the "
I Am the Walrus
"I Am the Walrus" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1967 television film ''Magical Mystery Tour''. Written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney, it was released as the B-side to the single "Hello, Goodbye" a ...
" Beatles song—particularly the Beatles song’s opening lyric.
Personnel
*
Peter Cetera
Peter Paul Cetera ( ; born September 13, 1944) is an American retired musician best known for being a lead vocalist and the bassist of the rock band Chicago from 1967 until his departure in 1985, before launching a successful solo career. His ...
– bass, lead and backing vocals
*
Terry Kath
Terry Alan Kath (January 31, 1946 – January 23, 1978) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, best known as a founding member of the rock band Chicago. He played guitar and sang lead vocals on many of the band's early hit singl ...
– guitars, lead and backing vocals
*
Robert Lamm
Robert William Lamm (born October 13, 1944) is an American keyboardist, guitarist, singer and songwriter best known as a founding member of the rock band Chicago. He wrote many of the band's biggest hits, including " Questions 67 & 68", "Does ...
– keyboards, lead and backing vocals
*
Lee Loughnane
Lee David Loughnane (pronounced LOCK-nain; born October 21, 1946) is an American trumpeter, flugelhorn player, vocalist, and songwriter, best known for being a founding member of the rock band Chicago.
Early life and education
Lee David Loughna ...
– trumpet,
claves
Claves (; ) are a percussion instrument consisting of a pair of short, wooden sticks about 20–25 centimeters (8–10 inches) long and about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) in diameter. Although traditionally made of wood (typically rosewood, ebony o ...
, backing vocals
*
James Pankow
James Carter Pankow is an American trombone player, songwriter and brass instrument player, best known as a founding member of the rock band Chicago.
Early life, family and education
Born in St. Louis, Missouri of German and Irish descent, Pa ...
– trombone,
cowbell
A cowbell (or cow bell) is a bell worn around the neck of free-roaming livestock so herders can keep track of an animal via the sound of the bell when the animal is grazing out of view in hilly landscapes or vast plains. Although they are t ...
*
Walter Parazaider
Walter Parazaider (born March 14, 1945) is an American woodwind musician best known for being a founding member of the rock band Chicago. He plays a wide variety of wind instruments, including saxophone, flute, and clarinet. He also occasionall ...
– saxophone, tambourine, backing vocals
*
Danny Seraphine
Daniel Peter Seraphine (born August 28, 1948) is an American drummer, record producer, theatrical producer and film producer. He is best known as the original drummer and a founding member of the rock band Chicago, a tenure which lasted fr ...
– drums, percussion
Production
*
James William Guercio
James William Guercio (born July 18, 1945) is an American music producer, musician, songwriter, and director. He is well known for his work as the producer of Chicago's early albums as well as early recordings of The Buckinghams and Blood, Sweat ...
– producer, original liner notes
*
Fred Catero
Fred Catero (February 4, 1933 – October 6, 2022) was an American record producer and engineer. Catero was originally from New York City, where he worked for CBS Records/Columbia, recording artists such as Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears. Invit ...
– engineer
* Nick Fasciano – artwork
2002
reissue
* Lee Loughnane – A&R, project supervisor
* David McLees – A&R, project supervisor
* Gary Peterson – A&R, project supervisor
* Mike Engstrom – project manager
* April Milek – project assistant
* Bob O'Neill – project assistant
* Ingrid K. Olson – project assistant
* Randy Perry – project assistant
* Steve Woolard – project assistant
* Jeff Magid – audio supervisor
* Cory Frye – editorial supervisor
* Steven Chean – editorial research
* David Donnelly – remastering
* Hugh Brown – photography
* Maria Villar – art direction, design
*
David Wild – liner notes
Charts
''Chicago Transit Authority'' (Columbia 8) reached No. 17 in the US during a chart stay of 171 weeks. It also peaked at No. 9 in the UK.
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Singles
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chicago Transit Authority, The
Chicago (band) albums
1969 debut albums
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Albums produced by James William Guercio
Columbia Records albums
Hard rock albums by American artists
Albums recorded at CBS 30th Street Studio