Customer Reviews

Super Session

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With all due respect to Marc Greilsamer, I have to disagree. After more than 30 years of listening to all that the "main three" (Bloomfield, Kooper,and Stills) have offered up, I believe this pivotal recording is indeed some of the best of each.

I recently saw Kooper perform here locally where he reiterated his contention that Bloomfield's best has yet to have been caputured in a single recording. But, he pointed to this album as one that came very close to it. After having seen Bloomfield perform in various settings and venues over the years, I'd have to agree. That being said,I can't accept a statement that it's "hopelessly mired in 1968."

As testament to this, you wouldn't believe the number of times in recent years that I've played this CD (often to younger listeners)only to have someone totally unfamiliar with it sit up and say "Wow, who IS that? They're GREAT!" The music stands up.

FYI to Fans: According to Kooper, there will be a 2 CD set of his music released domestically next Spring. Around the same time, the recently recovered "lost tapes" of the Fillmore East live sessions (those from which the "Live Adventures.." album was taken)will be released on a 2 CD compilation. Kooper claims that these are even better than the original "Live Adventures.." stuff!

Sure it is mired in 1968. Would you expect that an album(vinyl)be made to today's standards? I bought this when it first came out on vinyl and rebought it on CD when I saw it. It gives the raw and spontaneous art for which much of today's music is lacking. Mike Bloomfield was a legend and this album shows him in great form. It also gives a portrait of Stills as he was backed up by musicians he was unfamiliar with. Let the album be what it is and not what you would like it to be. Listen and enjoy great musicians enjoying the music and not worrying about polish.

In the absence of any intelligible listener reviews (such as the well written entry by BluesDuke below) I usually defer to Amazon's editorial reviews for guidance on unfamiliar music. As I am well familiar with the music on this disc I find Mr. Greilsamer's comments to be pretty far off the mark. What he dismisses as "enjoyable but dispensible noodling" I have for almost the last three decades considered to be some of the finest electric blues guitar playing I have ever heard. Indispensible. Opinions in music vary widely to be sure but to provide a more founded perspective than the editor who either listened to this disc only once or has no real insight into the music he's reviewing I have been studying guitar for 30 years and have found Mike Bloomfield's playing on this disc to be some of the finest I have ever heard, unqualified. In attempting to learn the craft of blues guitar improvisation I have learned more from "Albert's Shuffle" and "Really" than most all other albums combined. From what I have derived over the years, many other listeners and guitar players alike share this opinion. I'm a little concerned when I read supposedly authoritative reviews by people who have no more than a superficial knowledge of the genre and the music they are panning.

If you want Bloomfield's best blues, and jazziest, most soulful, most lyrical album, then this is your Holy Grail. With the passage of time some things wear thin, like Kooper's vocals on "Man's Tempation", the tape-whoosh dual-flanger effect on "You Don't Love Me," and the overkill of the 15-minute "Season of the Witch," but "Harvey's Tune" (with no guitar!) is a beautiful, soulful, lovely jewel of a song, and Stills' guitar-work on "It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" and "You Don't Love Me" are first-rate, with Stills sounding an awful lot like Jimi Hendrix on the latter tune, which really deserves that treatment. In the end though, the more you listen to it, the more beautiful Bloomfield's playing becomes on soulful tunes like "Really" (and if you like this tune you should buy Barry Goldberg's Two Jews Blues just for "Blues For Barry And" with Bloomfield on it). Bloomfield's best straight-ahead blues is "Albert's Shuffle," and the beauty and creative lyricism (as well as the speed) of his jazz improvisation on "His Holy Modal Majesty" is breathtaking--it absolutely must be heard to be believed. And on every second of this album, Kooper's organ is just as beautiful, exquisite and soulful as Bloomfield's guitar. His organ playing is truly one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It's such a dirty rotten shame that this didn't turn out to be Bloomfield's first solo album, as Kooper had planned it. But considering each side of the album was cut with in only one day with Bloomfield and only one day with Stills, this album is a genuine miracle!

I'm surprised by all the dissing the Stills material has taken. Granted, it's kind of an unfair comparison with the Bloomfield stuff, which definitely smokes more, but that doesn't take anything away from Stills as a guitarist. He was never into the Chicago blues thing, so it's apples and oranges. Together, however, they're one tasty fruit basket! Kooper had the great vision - and courage - to make this album happen without a safety net. The liner notes tell it all - this is about brilliant talents getting together and just getting down to business. The Dylan cover should've been a hit single; it's better than the original and I almost never think covers can equal the original. As Kooper told me one time when I asked, the way it's done on Super Session was one of the ways it was recorded with Dylan, but His Bobness chose the slower version that appears on Highway 61 Revisited. Anyway, this is an essential album that no true rock fan can be without.

For fans of Bloomfield who can't get enough of his blues style.A thrown together on the spot jam session like this just doesn't get released anymore.And Stephen Stills showcases his best guitar work as well.My favorite happens to be the much maligned "Season Of The Witch".

College in the late 60's was a grind for me because I was taking engineering courses, working construction in the summer and had the draft board breathing down my neck. This album and Butterfield's first two albums just seemed to nail so many things. I mean, this was rock and roll and yet it was better than rock and roll. The Stones never sounded quite the same after that.

I bought the Vinyl LP when it was first released. More impressed with Stills than Bloomfield or Kooper at the time. It has come to make no difference. The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. Listen to this during the day and the jazzy stuff hits you. Listen in the wee small hours of the morning and those blues sneak right in, and grab your soul. Then, before you call it a night, sit quiet, real quiet, and let the short but haunting, "Harvey's Tune" soak in. Yeah, 31 years, two vinyl copies, and 3 Compact Discs of Super Sesssion. And a 20 year old son who says, "dad, that's cool." He's right.

It was Al Kooper's intention to showcase his friend Mike Bloomfield in the guitar ace's best light, something Kooper claims to this day hadn't yet been done on recordings. You could argue with him, based on the first two Butterfield Blues Band albums. But there is no question that, on his side of these proceedings (the original album featured Bloomfield on side one; Stephen Stills on side two), Bloomfield shone brightly and then some in the plan of the structured freewheeling jam. To paraphrase another critic about another artist, you could say that Bloomfield continued to improve from here, but you can't say that he got better - because it just doesn't GET better than this, especially "Really," the loveliest and most soulful piece of guitar playing he ever yielded up. (Considering how he shimmers on "Albert's Shuffle" and "His Holy Modal Majesty," that is saying something.) Kooper's argument probably applies more accurately to Kooper himself - he was never before so locked in to his partner, so pinpoint precise in his solos or exuberantly connected as an accompanist. The real surprise, though, is drummer Eddie Hoh, plucked from the Mamas and the Papas's road band but more than passable as a soul-style blues drummer. The Stills/Kooper selections? Pleasant enough if you get past the meandering "Season of the Witch" (thus why I dock a star). But he's no Mike Bloomfield. Then again, who IS?

This is an album composed almost entirely of blues, with a little soul (Man's Temptation) and jazz (Harvey's Tune) thrown in. It is Al Kooper's creation, and his keyboards (mostly organ, some electric piano) anchor the entire effort. Mike Bloomfield lays down sizzling lead guitar jams, but only on four instrumental tracks. Steven Stills fills that role less inspiringly on the subsequent, less guitar-driven tracks. Horns provide backup throughout, but never take the lead until the last track (Harvey's Tune), indicating that after being booted from Blood Sweat and Tears, Al backed off the idea of horn-based rock. Although Mike's solos merit a close listen, the album as a whole rates better as background music to a late night party than it does as a front and center event. It definitely has the feel of a "session", a very good one, but hardly "super", and you can get bored if you try to focus all your attention on it! So why 4 stars instead of 3? Simply because the 2-minute jazz masterpiece "Harvey's Tune", written by bassist Harvey Brooks, brings the whole album up one notch. As jazz, it doesn't even belong here, and would have been much more fitting on the occasionally jazzy Blood Sweat and Tears debut album "Child is Father to the Man". It has a gorgeous major-minor melody (sax in the lead), exquisite harmonies and counterpoint from trumpet and trombone, and Al's electric piano brilliantly defining the theme and the complex chord progression. It is moody and sophisticated and utterly beautiful - and much too short! So give the album 4 stars, and hooray for Harvey!