In 1968 Kooper,who had just left Blood,Sweat,&Tears,rented some studio time at Columbia’s studio and asked Mike Bloomfield,of Electric Flag to play with him. Also invited to the session was bassist Harvey Brooks and drummer Eddie Hoh. They recorded five Blues based jams on side one,the two best being “Albert’s Shuffle” and “His Holy Modal Majesty” a 9 minute jam that sounds like The Grateful Dead at one point. They also recorded Curtis Mayfield’s “Mans Temptation” with Kooper taking the vocals. Side one is over 28 minutes long. For the second day of the session Steven Stills,who was still in Buffalo Springfield at the time,joined them. They cut three songs with vocals and a short instrumental by Harvey Brooks. Stills takes the vocals on a Countryfied version of Dylan’s “It Takes A Lot To Laugh,It Takes A Train To Cry”. The high point of the record is an 11 minute version of Donovan’s “Season Of The Witch”. There are some nice jams on it with Kooper playing the organ and Stills making good use of the Wah-Wah pedal. I had this song on a 5 record box set of artists on the Colombia Record label I bought from the Colombia House Record Club in the early 70’s. It was one of my favorite songs on that collection that I parted with a long time ago. Saw it in a record store once and was tempted to buy it. I bought this record about five years ago at the record store near Oaks. It’s an original pressing from 1968 and the cover and record are in very good shape. I think I paid $10 for it.
