Sealed LP: Al Kooper: I Stand Alone

$

57

Al Kooper: I Stand Alone

FACTORY SEALED LP

• Overture
• I Stand Alone
• Camille
• One
• Coloured Rain
• Soft Landing on the Moon
• I Can Love a Woman
• Blue Moon of Kentucky
• Toe Hold
• Right Now for You
• The West. Union Man
• Song and Dance for the Unborn Frightened Child

• Wayne Moss: Guitar
• Brian Ross-Myring: Engineer
• Don Puluse: Engineer
• Neil Wilburn: Engineer
• Charlie McCoy: Harmonica
• John Berg: Cover Design
• Bob Cato: Cover Design
• Stephen Miller: Keyboards
• The Blossoms: Vocals
• Charlie Bragg: Engineer
• David Brown: Bass
• Kenneth A. Buttrey: Drums
• Fred Catero: Engineer
• Charlie Daniels: Bass, Guitar
• Jerry Kennedy: Guitar
• Glen Kolotkin: Engineer
• Elvin Bishop: Guitar
• Al Kooper: Guitar, Vocals, Cover Design, Main Performer, Producer, Keyboards
• Don Ellis: Horn

• Listening to I Stand Alone for the first time is a lot like first hearing the Sgt. Pepper album, except that this album challenges and rewards the listener in ways that the Beatles' psychedelic classic never tried to or could have. Al Kooper's first solo album is a dazzling, almost overpoweringly beautiful body of music, and nearly as sly at times in its humor as it is impressive in its musical sensibilities -- specifically, the overture serves its function, and also pokes knowing, savagely piercing fun at the then-current vogue for sound collage-type pieces (most especially the Beatles' "Revolution #9"). Those looking for a reference point can think of I Stand Alone as a very, very distant cousin to the second Blood, Sweat & Tears album, as well as a much closer relative to the original group's Child Is Father to the Man, drawing on a few remnants from the tail end of his tenure with the group and a bunch of new songs and compositions by others that Kooper wanted to record -- one beautiful element of his career, that helped distinguish him from a lot of other talented people of the period, is that unlike a lot of other musicians who were gifted songwriters Kooper never shied away from a good song written by someone else, especially if he could throw himself into it 10 percent or so; and he jumps in headfirst, as a stylist, singer, and musician, all over "I Stand Alone." Stylistically, it's a gloriously bold work, encompassing radiant soul, elements of jazz going back to the swing era, classical, pop, and even rockabilly -- and freely (and masterfully) mixing all of them -- into a phantasmagoric whole. The sources of inspiration (and, in some cases, songs) include Harry Nilsson ("One"), Bill Monroe (and who else, except maybe Elvis in a really inspired moment, was even thinking of covering "Blue Moon of Kentucky" in 1969?), Sam & Dave ("Toe Hold"), Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff ("Hey, West. Union Man"), the Beatles, as well as Kooper himself -- he delivers a lost classic in "Right Now for You" (which sounds like a really good lost cut from the Zombies' Odessey & Oracle album), and a hauntingly beautiful McCartney-esque nod to the Beatles in the "Eleanor Rigby"-like "Song and Dance for the Unborn Frightened Child." And, yet, for all of its diversity of sound and its free ranging repertory, and the unexpected edits and tempo changes, the album all holds together as a coherent body of work, a sort of more ambitious and personalized follow-up to Child Is Father to the Man that still leaves one kind of "whited out" (like the bleached irises of astronaut Dave Bowman's eyes at the end of his voyage through the stargate in 2001: A Space Odyssey) at the end -- not even Sgt. Pepper does that anymore. On the down side, the sound effects that Kooper dubbed in between (and sometimes during) the songs may seem strangely distracting today, but they were a product of their time -- this was the tail end of the psychedelic era, after all, and even Simon & Garfunkel had succumbed to the temptation the previous year, though it's hard to imagine too many people in the business keeping a straight face about such production techniques after hearing the fun this album has at their expense. I Stand Alone was a musical trip worth taking in 1969 -- thanks to a 2003 Japanese reissue (in 24-bit sound, with the original jacket recreated), the ticket is still there for the asking, and the value of the journey is undiminished decades later. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

• Al Kooper, by rights, should be regarded as one of the giants of '60s rock, not far behind the likes of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon in importance. In addition to co-writing one classic mid-'60s pop-rock song, "This Diamond Ring" (though it was written as an R&B number), he was a very audible sessionman on some of the most important records of mid-decade, including Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." Kooper also joined and led, and then lost two major groups, the Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears. He played on two classic blues-rock albums in conjunction with his friend Mike Bloomfield. As a producer at Columbia, he signed the British invasion act the Zombies just in time for them to complete the best LP in their entire history; and still later, Kooper discovered Lynyrd Skynyrd and produced their best work. Instead, in terms of public recognition, Kooper has been relegated to second-rank status, somewhere midway between John Mayall and Steve Winwood. Apart from the fact that he's made, and continues to make great music, it's the public's loss that he's not better respected outside the ranks of his fellow musicians.
• Kooper was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1944, the son of Sam and Natalie Kooper. As a boy, he enjoyed singing along to the Bessie Smith records that his father played, and they provided his introduction to blues and, by extension, gospel, R&B and soul, all of the sounds that would form the basis for his own music. Equally important, he revealed himself a natural musician -- one day he sat down in front of a piano and started playing one of the then current hits of the early '50s, with no prior training or experience. He learned on his own, and also took up the guitar. Kooper's main interest during the 1950s lay in gospel music. When rock & roll broke, Kooper was drawn to the vocal side of the new music, forming a doo-wop outfit that sang on street corners in his neighborhood in the late '50s. He turned professional in 1959, joining the line-up of the Royal Teens ("Short Shorts," "Believe Me") as a guitarist. By the early '60s, he'd begun writing songs, and among his early efforts was "I Must Be Seeing Things," which was a hit for Gene Pitney.
• Kooper's biggest hit as a songwriter came in late 1964, with a song that he co-authored with Bob Brass and Irwin Levine called "This Diamond Ring" -- they'd written it with the Drifters in mind, but the legendary R&B group passed, and it ended up in the hands of Liberty Records producer Snuff Garrett. He made it the first song to be cut by a new group called Gary Lewis & the Playboys. The record entered the charts late in 1964 and spent the early weeks of 1965 in the number one spot. The recording, although not to Kooper's liking compared to what he'd visualized for the Drifters, started a string of almost unbelievably fortuitous events in his life and career. In those days, he was trying to make a big part of his living as a session guitarist, and when a friend, producer Tom Wilson, invited him to observe at a Bob Dylan recording session that spring, he brought his instrument along with him in the hope that something might happen. When they needed a second keyboard player for the organ on "Like a Rolling Stone," Kooper bluffed his way to the spot. Dylan loved the part that Kooper improvised and boosted it in the mix.
• Kooper later played as part of the band that backed Dylan when he introduced electric music to the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, and was on the Blonde on Blonde album as well. That same year, Kooper was invited by Wilson to sit in on keyboards for an audition tape by a newly-formed New York blues-rock outfit called the Blues Project, and was asked to join the group. He eventually became one of the lead singers, and three massively important and critically acclaimed albums coincided with his year-long stay. By the time he'd exited the Blues Project, Kooper was ready to start a band with a jazz and R&B sound that he had in mind -- one with a serious horn section -- and the result was Blood, Sweat & Tears. Signed to Columbia Records in late 1967, they cut a debut album that was made up almost entirely of Al Kooper songs, and which set the music pages and their authors afire with enthusiasm -- The Child Is Father to the Man, as their debut record was titled, was one of the most important and daring albums of the '60s, as essential as any long-player ever cut by the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.
• Unfortunately, Blood, Sweat & Tears generated more press than sales -- although that debut album did ride the low reaches of the charts for almost a year -- and tensions within the group and pressure from the record company, which wanted a more commercial sound that would sell more records, led to Kooper's exit from the band. Now out of his second successful group in two years, Kooper returned to playing sessions and turned up on records by Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and the Rolling Stones ("You Can't Always Get What You Want"). He also got a job at Columbia Records -- a runner-up prize for having been forced out of Blood, Sweat & Tears (which, by then, was making a fortune for the label with a retooled sound and line-up) -- as a producer. He engineered a concert recording by Simon & Garfunkel that could have been their first official live album. More important was a pair of albums that Kooper cut with his longtime friend, guitarist Michael Bloomfield. Those records, Super Session, cut with Stephen Stills, and The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper were among Columbia's best-selling LPs of the period; they were the kind of albums that, coupled with The Child Is Father to the Man, helped put Columbia Records on the cutting edge of popular music.
• Kooper's other major contribution during his tenure at Columbia was signing the Zombies, a British Invasion-era band that hadn't charted a single in two years, for one album. The group seemed to be on their last legs and were, in fact, about to break up, but Columbia got one classic album (Odessey & Oracle) and a monster hit single ("Time of the Season") from the deal. The least prominent of Kooper's projects during this era, ironically enough, was his solo album I Stand Alone, on which he cut new versions of songs he'd written or been associated with over the previous decade. He spread himself too thin in making the record, and the album failed to sell in serious numbers. A follow up record, Kooper Session, was similarly ignored despite the presence of blues guitar prodigy Shuggie Otis, but Kooper remained one of the most successful names in rock music.
• During the early '70s, Kooper had his own label, Sounds of the South, set up through MCA -- his big discovery was Lynyrd Skynyrd. He produced their first three albums, whose sales eventually numbered in the millions. Kooper also produced records by the Tubes, B.B. King, Nils Lofgren, and Joe Ely, among many others, during the '70s, and he found time during that decade to write what remains the best book ever written about rock & roll from an insider's perspective, -Backstage Passes. Kooper's recording activity slackened off in the 1980s, although he performed with Dylan, Tom Petty, and Joe Walsh, and did some soundtrack work in television and films. During the 1990s, after a more-than-20-year hiatus, he returned to recording his own sound with ReKooperation, an instrumental album released by the MusicMasters label, a company much more closely associated with jazz and classical than rock.
• Equally important were a handful of live gigs by principal members of the original Blood, Sweat & Tears, their first shows in 25 years. These performances led to a series of birthday shows at New York's Bottom Line in 1994, which yielded the double-CD concert recording Soul of a Man. Kooper covered most of his own music history with the key members of the original Blood, Sweat & Tears and the definitive Blues Project line-up (who had gotten back together every so often, beginning in the early '70s). Kooper pulled together a unified sound, built around soul, jazz, and gospel influences, despite the varied personnel involved, in his most accomplished solo project ever. Anyone counting the records on which Al Kooper has played a key role -- as songwriter, singer, keyboardman, guitarist, or producer -- would come up with tens of millions of albums and singles sold, and a lot of radio airtime. His career recalls that of Steve Winwood in some respects, though he's never had a solo hit. Even in the '90s, however, Kooper remains a formidable performing talent, and one of the most inspired and intelligent people in rock music.

FINE PRINT

• All pictures are of the exact item being sold.
• This record came from a record store called "Phantasmagoria" which was located in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Phantasmagoria went out of business in 1978. I purchased most of their leftover inventory some years later when I owned a new & used record store in Catasauqua called "Music Madness". Music Madness is still listed in the phone book if you want to try to contact me.
• Phantasmagoria used round colored stickers to indicate the price of the albums. They had a sign on the wall with the color sticker combinations for the customers to use so they knew the price of the albums. Most of the albums still have these stickers on them, and in some rare cases, the stickers are written on.
• Your item(s) will be shipped within two business days after I receive your payment.
• I always leave feedback before your item ships. Please consider leaving feedback for me after you have had a chance to inspect and enjoy this record.
• Please avoid questions on the last day of the auction. I might not have enough time to give you an answer before the auction ends.
• Payment by PayPal only (except for items when local pick-up has been arranged).
• Almost all album reviews, credits and artist biographies are from All Music Guide. If you haven't been to their web site, you should check it out. It's one of the most comprehensive music references on the internet. In some cases, the above credits may include reissue (CD) information. Obviously any credits referenced to CDs do not apply to these album releases.
• All sealed albums are being sold as collector's items and cannot be returned due to manufacturer's defects. It may be almost impossible to replace many of the sealed albums that I am selling.
• IT IS NOT MY INTENTION TO MAKE A PROFIT ON THE POSTAGE. ANY ACCIDENTAL OVERCHARGE GREATER THAN $1 WILL BE REFUNDED TO YOU. (I've been know to refund less than $1 overcharges too.)

Shipping

• Pick-up is fine with me. Just be prepared to pay by cash. No shipping fees apply. E-mail me to setup a time that is convenient for the both of us.
• All uninsured and underinsured shipments are the responsibility of the buyer.
• I have started to add a $1.00 "handling fee" which is to help defray the cost of a new mailing box. This is approximately what I pay for them from BagsUnlimited. If you opt to have your record(s) shipped by Priority Mail, I will refund the dollar since the box from the Post Office is free. If you don't chose Priority Mail and you feel that the dollar is unfair, let me know so I can refund it. Upon refunding your dollar, I will package your album(s) in an "almost new" mailer which was used to send a record to me (yes, I'm a collector too).

• Foreign buyers must pay with US dollars through PayPal only. Please do not send cash - it's too risky.
• SHIPPING: I will send an invoice with options for the cost of shipping after the auction ends. You will have the choice of the following two options:
• USPS First Class International: Estimated delivery time to most countries is about 10-30 days. (Customs may delay delivery)
• USPS Priority Mail International: Estimated delivery time to most countries is about 6-10 days. (Customs may delay delivery)
• All uninsured and underinsured shipments are the responsibility of the buyer.
• I have started to add a $1.00 "handling fee" which is to help defray the cost of a new mailing box. This is approximately what I pay for them from BagsUnlimited. If you opt to have your record(s) shipped by Priority Mail, I will refund the dollar since the box from the Post Office is free. If you don't chose Priority Mail and you feel that the dollar is unfair, let me know so I can refund it. Upon refunding your dollar, I will package your album(s) in an "almost new" mailer which was used to send a record to me (yes, I'm a collector too).
• The buyer is responsible for all customs regulations and fees in their own country. Unless you ask me to ask me to value your items at less than the winning bid, I will put the winning bid price on the customs form. If you request lower values on the customs forms, any associated risks are yours.
• You can go to the USPS International Postage Calculator to approximate the cost of your postage. The shipping weight for this record is listed near the beginning of this listing. If you are purchasing multiple records and need to manually calculate the postage, subtract 8 ounces (the weight of the box) from the shipping weight as shown above for each additional record.