Al Kooper (Alan Peter Kuperschmidt, February 5, 1944) songwriter, record producer, musician

Al Kooper

Al Kooper, nato Alan Peter Kuperschmidt (New York, 5 febbraio 1944), è un musicista statunitense.
Tastierista, compositore, arrangiatore, produttore, è una figura centrale in tutta la musica rock dagli anni sessanta ad oggi. Pur avendo radici nel rock'n'roll e nel blues, è stato sempre aperto a nuove sperimentazioni.

Biografia

Dopo aver esordito a fine anni cinquanta con il gruppo rock'n'roll The Royal Teens, ha raggiunto la fama come collaboratore di Bob Dylan in quelli che vengono comunemente considerati i suoi due capolavori, ovvero i dischi Highway 61 Revisited (a lui è accreditata l'invenzione del celeberrimo riff di organo di Like a Rolling Stone) e Blonde on Blonde, rispettivamente del 1965 e del 1966. In seguito tornerà a più riprese al fianco del cantautore americano negli album Self Portrait (1969), New Morning (1970), Empire Burlesque (1985), Knocked Out Loaded (1986) e Under the Red Sky (1991).
Sulla scia del successo conseguito con Dylan, forma prima i Blues Project, con i quali contribuisce a diffondere il verbo del blues revival e del folk psichedelico, e in seguito i Blood, Sweat & Tears, tra le prime band a tentare una fusion tra musica bianca e nera, ispirando quello che verrà poi denominato jazz-rock.
Nel 1968 dà alle stampe l'album di session informali Super Session, registrato insieme a Mike Bloomfield e Stephen Stills e considerato molto influente per il futuro sviluppo della fusion. L'anno successivo collabora con il giovanissimo Shuggie Otis, figlio del più noto Johnny, nell'album Kooper Session.
Ha collaborato con i Rolling Stones, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Alice Cooper e B.B. King. Ha inoltre scoperto la band Southern rock Lynyrd Skynyrd e prodotto i loro primi tre dischi. Nel 1975 ha prodotto il debutto della band glam rock The Tubes.
È stato insegnante di composizione e tecniche d'incisione al Berklee College of Music.

Al Kooper (born Alan Peter Kuperschmidt, February 5, 1944) is an 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), providing studio support for Bob Dylan when he went electric in 1965, and bringing together guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills to record the Super Session album. He has had a successful solo career since then, written music for film soundtracks, and has lectured in musical composition. He continues to perform live.

Life and career (1950s–1970s)

Kooper, born in Brooklyn, grew up in a Jewish family in Hollis Hills, Queens, New York. His first professional work was as a 14-year-old guitarist in the Royal Teens, best known for their 1958 ABC Records novelty 12-bar blues riff, "Short Shorts" (although Kooper did not play on the recording). In 1960, he teamed up with songwriters Bob Brass and Irwin Levine to write and record demos for Sea-Lark Music Publishing. The trio's biggest hits were "This Diamond Ring", recorded by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, and "I Must Be Seeing Things", recorded by Gene Pitney (both 1965). When he was 21, Kooper moved to Greenwich Village.
He performed with Bob Dylan in concert in 1965, including playing Hammond organ with Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, and in the recording studio in 1965 and 1966. Kooper also played the Hammond organ riffs on Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone". It was in those recording sessions that Kooper met and befriended Mike Bloomfield, whose guitar playing he admired. He worked extensively with Bloomfield for several years. Kooper played organ once again with Dylan during his 1981 world tour.
Kooper joined the Blues Project as their keyboardist in 1965; he left the band shortly before their gig at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, although he did play a solo set at the famous festival, as evidenced by bootlegs of the event. He formed Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1967, leaving due to creative differences in 1968, after the release of the group's first album, Child Is Father to the Man. He recorded Super Session with Bloomfield and Stills in 1968, and in 1969 he collaborated with 15-year-old guitarist Shuggie Otis on the album Kooper Session. In 1975 he produced the debut album by the Tubes.
Kooper has played on hundreds of records, including ones by the Rolling Stones, B. B. King, the Who, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Alice Cooper, and Cream. On occasion, he has even overdubbed his own efforts, as on The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper and other albums, under the pseudonym "Roosevelt Gook". After moving to Atlanta in 1972, he discovered the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, and produced and performed on their first three albums, including the singles "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Free Bird".
He wrote the score for the TV series Crime Story and for the film The Landlord and wrote music for several made-for-television movies. He was the musical force behind many of the pop tunes, including "You're the Lovin' End", for The Banana Splits, a children's television program.

Life and career (1980s–present)

During the late 1980s Kooper had his own dedicated keyboard studio room in the historic Sound Emporium recording studio in Nashville, next to studio B.

"I'm so pleased to be in Britain, I could just sit and pour tea over my head."

Al Kooper

Kooper published a memoir, Backstage Passes: Rock 'n' Roll Life in the Sixties (1977), which was revised and published as Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock 'n' Roll Survivor (1998). The revised edition includes indictments of "manipulators" in the music industry, including his one-time business manager, Stan Polley. An updated edition, including supplementary material, was published by Backbeat Books in 2008.
Kooper's status as a published author enabled him to join (and act as musical director of) the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band made up of writers, including Dave Barry, Stephen King, Amy Tan, and Matt Groening.
In May 2001, Kooper was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music. Kooper is retired from teaching songwriting and recording production at Berklee College of Music, in Boston, and plays weekend concerts with his bands the ReKooperators and the Funky Faculty. In 2008, he participated in the production of the album Psalngs, the debut release of Canadian musician John Lefebvre.
Kooper was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum, in Nashville, in 2008.
In 2005, Martin Scorsese produced a documentary titled No Direction Home: Bob Dylan for the PBS American Masters Series in which Kooper's contributions are recognized.

Like a Rolling Stone

Al Kooper is most notable as the driving force behind the RIAA certified gold album, Super Session (with Stephen Stills and Mike Bloomfield) (1968) as well as Blood, Sweat & Tears (1968). He played the organ parts of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" and was in the band along with Bloomfield and Barry Goldberg at Dylan's notorious 'electric folk' gig at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
Kooper had been invited to the session as an observer and hoped to be allowed to sit in on guitar, his primary instrument. He uncased his guitar and began tuning it. After hearing Mike Bloomfield, who was the hired session guitarist, warming up, he concluded that Bloomfield was a much better guitarist, so Kooper put his guitar aside and retreated into the control room.
As the recording sessions progressed, keyboardist Paul Griffin was moved from the Hammond organ to piano. Kooper quickly suggested to producer Tom Wilson that he had a "great organ part" for the song (which he later confessed was just a ruse to play in the session), and Wilson responded, "Al, you're not an organ player, you're a guitar player", but Kooper stood his ground. Before Wilson could explicitly reject Kooper's suggestion, he was interrupted by a phone call in the control room. Kooper immediately went into the studio and sat down at the organ. When Wilson returned, he was shocked to find Kooper in the studio. By this time, Kooper had been playing along with Dylan and his backing band. His organ can be heard coming in an eighth note behind the other members of the band, as Kooper followed to make sure he was playing the proper chords. During a playback of tracks in the control room, when asked about the organ track, Dylan was emphatic: "Turn the organ up!"

Discography

Solo

Studio albums

• I Stand Alone (February 1969)
• You Never Know Who Your Friends Are (October 1969)
• Easy Does It (September 1970)
• New York City (You're a Woman) (June 1971)
• A Possible Projection of the Future / Childhood's End (April 1972)
• Naked Songs (1973)
• Act Like Nothing's Wrong (January 1977)
• Championship Wrestling (featuring Jeff "Skunk" Baxter) (1982)
• Rekooperation (June 1994)
• Black Coffee (August 2005)
• White Chocolate (2008)

Live albums

• Soul of a Man (February 1995)

Collaborations

• Super Session (with Stephen Stills and Mike Bloomfield) (1968)
• The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper (February 1969)
• Fillmore East: The Lost Concert Tapes 12/13/68 (with Mike Bloomfield, recorded 1968, issued April 2003)
• Kooper Session: Super Session Vol. 2 (with Shuggie Otis) (1969)
• Johnnie B. Live (with Johnnie Johnson) (1997)

Compilations

• Al's Big Deal – Unclaimed Freight/An Al Kooper Anthology (1975)
• Rare and Well Done

Also appears on

• Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Blonde on Blonde (1966), Self Portrait (1970), New Morning (1970), Dylan (1973)
• The Blues Project - Live at Café Au Go Go (1966), Projections (1966), The Blues Project Live at Town Hall (1967)
• The Who - The Who Sell Out (1967)
• Blood, Sweat and Tears - Child is Father to the Man (1968)
• Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland (1968)
• The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed (1969)
• B.B. King - Live & Well (1969)
• Atlanta Rhythm Section - Back Up Against the Wall (1973)
• The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration - Bob Dylan 1992

Albums produced

• Don Ellis - Autumn (1968)
• Don Ellis - New Don Ellis Band Goes Underground (1969)
• Lynyrd Skynyrd - Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd (1973), Second Helping (1974), Nuthin' Fancy (1975)
• The Tubes - The Tubes (1975)
• 4 on the Floor - 4 on the Floor (1979)
• Dave Sharp - Hard Traveling (1991)
• Green On Red - Scapegoats (1991)
• Chris Catena - Freak Out (2004)

Al Kooper & Mike Bloomfield "Albert's Shuffle" - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbpGMF4bcbU

Al Kooper-Jolie - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb64tNQiFDU

Lyrics

When I was coming down from someone else ya know
You took my hand
You pushed me up, you pulled me out
Ya done me good do ya understand?
No one else around could have saved me
Oh Jolie ya shone just like the sun
And like the dead you came and you raised me
Oh Jolie look at what you done... baby!!

You may be young but you got so much more
Than any girl I know
And I see your face most every place
Don't make no difference where I go

So lets not fall so fast that we get crazy
Oh Jolie will ya think of me?
And when your picture of me gets a little hazy
Ya know Jolie its only you I see, Jolie!

No one else around could have saved me
Oh Jolie ya shone just like the sun
And like the dead you came and you raised me
Oh Jolie look at what you done
Look at what you done

Baby!
Jolie, I love you

Songwriters: Al Kooper

Jolie lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

 

 

Season of the Witch - Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Steve Stills - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWkMMXgQohc

Al Kooper - I Stand Alone (Album 1969 Vinyl) - YouTube

▶ 40:58

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tz41qorKxU

Jul 22, 2017 - Uploaded by haru oh

Al Kooper - I Stand Alone Produced by Al Kooper Al Kooper - piano, organ, ondioline, guitars, vocals, Wayne ...

 

Brand new day - Al Kooper - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gnCISWHOjI

 

Lyrics

Last night I had a dream that the world
Was changing by leaps and bounds
It started up in the bigger cities
Than it spread to the smaller towns

The people began to smile at people
That they’d never even seen
And when Jeremiah woke me up
I was ready to live that dream

Well, it’s a brand new day
Brand new way, brand new day
Give it to me, alright

You know the mother called the father on the telephone
She cried, "My God I’m so upset"
She said the boy left home naked this morning
All he took was the TV set

Than the sister picked up the extension
And she said, “He’s just doing his thing”
Than the father hung up on the mother
And the children began to sing

Well, it’s a brand new day, yes
A brand new way, brand new day

We gotta put our heads together
And see where we go from there
We gotta fight for what we believe in
'Cause there’s something in the air

And it’s a brand new day, that's right
Brand new way, brand new day
I can feel it growing stronger every minute now

Twenty million shadows storming at the gates
Now how can you be surprised?
With the image of the fallen four reflected in their eyes

And though twenty million tongues are shouting now
It's only heard by a precious few
But the years of night will pass forever
When the sun comes shining through

On a brand new day
Brand new way, yes, a brand new day

Hey people, you know that it's a brand new day
Brand new way, brand new way you're walking
Brand new day, yes, a brand new way
Go ahead now

And it's alright, yes, it's alright
And it's alright now, it's alright
And it's alright, yes, it's alright
And it's alright

Songwriters: Al Kooper

Brand New Day lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

 

 

Bloomfield, Kooper, Stills - Super Session - 06 - It Takes A Lot To ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz47XGsi2e0