Super Session
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| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic | StarStarStarStarHalf star[1] |
| The Encyclopedia of Popular Music | StarStarStarStarFile:Star empty.svg[3] |
| Rolling Stone | (positive)[2] |
Super Session is an album by the singer and multi-instrumentalist Al Kooper, with the guitarists Mike Bloomfield on the first half and Stephen Stills on the second half. Released by Columbia Records in 1968, it peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard 200 during a 37-week chart stay and was certified gold by RIAA.[4][5]
Background
Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield had worked together on the sessions for Bob Dylan's ground-breaking classic Highway 61 Revisited, and played in the backing band for his controversial performance with electric instruments at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1965. Kooper had recently left Blood, Sweat & Tears after they recorded their debut album, and was now working as an A&R man for Columbia Records. Bloomfield was about to leave the Electric Flag, and at a loose end. Kooper telephoned Bloomfield to see if he was free to come down to the studio and jam; Bloomfield agreed, leaving Kooper to handle the arrangements.[6]
Kooper booked two days of studio time at CBS Columbia Square in Los Angeles in May 1968, and recruited keyboardist Barry Goldberg and bassist Harvey Brooks, both members of the Electric Flag, along with well-known session drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh. On the first day, the quintet recorded a group of mostly blues-based instrumental tracks. It included the modal excursion "His Holy Modal Majesty", which was a tribute to modal jazz musician John Coltrane, who had died the previous year, and was also reminiscent of "East-West" from the second Butterfield Blues Band album. On the second day, with the tapes ready to roll, Bloomfield returned to his home in Mill Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area, saying he had been unable to sleep.[6]
Needing to have something to show for the second day of booked studio time, Kooper hastily called upon Stephen Stills, who was in the process of leaving his band, Buffalo Springfield, to replace Bloomfield. Regrouping behind Stills, Kooper's session men cut mostly vocal tracks, including "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" from Highway 61 and a lengthy and atmospheric take of "Season of the Witch" by Donovan.[7] Although Harvey Brooks's closing "Harvey's Tune" includes overdubbed horns added in New York City while the album was being mixed, the album only cost $13,000 to complete.
The success of the album opened the door for the "supergroup" concept of the late 1960s and 1970s, as exemplified by the likes of Blind Faith and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Despite the fact that Bloomfield left the recording session after the first day, he and Kooper made several concert appearances after the album was released. The results of one of those became the album The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper.[8]
Releases
Along with the stereo version, Super Session was released as a 4-channel quadraphonic version in the 1970s. The quadraphonic version was released on SQ matrix encoded vinyl and discrete 8-track cartridge tape. On April 8, 2003, Legacy Records reissued the album on compact disc with four bonus tracks, including both an outtake and a live track with Bloomfield, and two with the horn overdubs mixed out.
In the early 2000s, it was intended that it would be remixed for the new 5.1 channel version to be released on SACD. But in late 2004, Al Kooper commented:
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To the best of my knowledge, based on an unnamed source, the new head of SONY/BMG shut down the 5.1 SACD department and let everyone go. A year and a half ago I remixed Super Session and Child Is Father to the Man for them in 5.1 SACD. They both came out incredible and so I mastered them with Bob Ludwig. Now it seems they will languish on the shelves under the current administration of SONY/BMG ...Typical, in soooo many ways."[9]
Both 5.1 remixed SACDs were released in 2014 by Audio Fidelity. The original quadraphonic mix of Super Session was released on Hybrid SACD by Sony Records Int'l in 2023.
Legacy
In their retrospective review, Lindsay Planer of AllMusic comments on the album's original impact: Template:Quote
The album has been compared to other albums of jam sessions of the era, namely Moby Grape's Grape Jam (1968), George Harrison's Apple Jam (1970) and members of the Rolling Stones (with Ry Cooder and Nicky Hopkins) with Jamming with Edward! (1971).[10][11] Don Ottenhoff of The Grand Rapids Press, writing in 1971, questioned the idea of "musicians getting together and just letting the tapes run", adding that although Super Session and Grape Jam were "more musically solid than most jam records, they both were tinged with an element of tediousness."[10]
In 2005, Dan Daley of Sound on Sound credited Super Session for "[putting] the jazz-based notion of the jam session squarely into the mainstream of rock."[12] Daley praised Stills for accepting Kooper's invitation to join the jam, saying it "turned what would have been a musically astute jam session record into an all-star record event, laying the groundwork for a slew of 'supergroups' to come."[12]
Track listing
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Personnel
- Al Kooper – vocals, piano, Hammond organ, Ondioline, electric guitar, twelve-string guitar
- Mike Bloomfield – electric guitar on side one, reissue tracks 10, 12, 13
- Stephen Stills – electric guitar on side two, reissue track 11
- Barry Goldberg – electric piano on "Albert's Shuffle" and "Stop"
- Harvey Brooks – bass guitar
- Eddie Hoh – drums, percussion
Additional personnel
- Horn section – unknown session players; arranged by Al Kooper and Joe Scott
- Fred Catero, Roy Halee – engineering
- Martin Greenblatt – digital mastering
Charts
| Chart (1968–69) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| US Billboard Top LPs[13] | 12 |
| Canadian RPM 100 Albums[14] | 15 |
| Dutch Hitparade[15] | 18 |
| US Cash Box Top 100 Albums[16] | 18 |
| US Record World Album Chart[17] | 14 |
| Chart (1972) | Peak position |
| Spanish Album Charts[18] | 25 |
| Chart (2003) | Peak position |
| Italian Album Charts[19] | 87 |
Certification
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| United States (RIAA)[20] | Gold | 500,000 |
|
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. | ||
References
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- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Planer, Lindsay. "Super Session - Bloomfield-Kooper-Stills". AllMusic. Retrieved July 26, 2011.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Brody, Jim (October 12, 1968). "Records". Rolling Stone.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Larkin, Colin (2007). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195313734.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Gold & Platinum". RIAA. Retrieved May 24, 2021.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Mike Bloomfield". Billboard.com. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
- ^ a b Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Biography: part 2". Michael Bloomfield: An American Guitarist. Retrieved May 24, 2021.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."MikeBloomfield.com". Archived from the original on March 28, 2006. Retrieved May 24, 2021.
- ^ SuiteLorraine.com
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Blogcritics.org (PDF)". Archived from the original on June 25, 2006. Retrieved May 24, 2021.
- ^ a b Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Ottenhoff, Don (February 19, 1972). "For What It's Worth". The Grand Rapids Press. p. 9-A. Retrieved July 11, 2025.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Murphy, Robert (February 13, 1972). "Jam session album is bargain". Scene. The Daily Breeze. p. 10. Retrieved July 11, 2025.
- ^ a b Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Daley, Dan (January 2005). "Interview: Al Kooper" (PDF). Sound on Sound: 54. Retrieved August 16, 2025.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Stephen Stills". Billboard. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Canada, Library and Archives (April 16, 2013). "The RPM story". Bac-lac.gc.ca. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Super Session". hitparade.ch. Retrieved January 19, 2020.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Cash Box Magazine: Music and coin machine magazine 1942 to 1996". Worldradiohistory.com. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Record World Magazine: 1942 to 1982". Worldradiohistory.com. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Salaverri, Fernando (2005). Sólo éxitos: año a año, 1959–2002. Fundación Autor-SGAE. ISBN 84-8048-639-2.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Italian Chart Positions" (PDF). Italycharts.com.
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