Blood, Sweat & Tears Fails To Rouse SPAC Crowd
by Bill Rice, The Troy Record, September 11, 1972
The final series of specials at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center opened Friday evening with a bomb—Blood, Sweat and Tears, a jazz rock group that in previous years has performed to capacity SPAC crowds, drew only about 4,000 people on a damp and foggy evening.
The personnel of the group has undergone considerable change since their performance in Saratoga a year ago. Most of these changes could have been weathered by BS&T except the loss of lead singer David Clayton Thomas, whose big rough voice made most of the group’s hits such as Spinning Wheel, Lucretia McEvil, Hi-De-Ho and You’ve Made Me So Very Happy.
Filling Thomas’ shoes is red-haired, red-bearded Jerry Fisher whose voice is similar in some respects but mellower than his predecessor’s. We can’t fault his singing but Fisher sometimes didn’t seem to know what to do with himself physically on stage.
He is faced with the necessity (to please the fans) of doing some of Thomas’ big songs. He doesn’t do them badly but Thomas had such a distinctive individual style it is impossible for anyone to put them over as he did, in front of this group at least.
Volume Trouble
More often than not. the 10-member group was too loud and its four good horns might as well not have been there in some of the ensemble work. Old-timers in the group included Bob Colomby on drums, Steve Katz on guitar, Lew Soloff on trumpet, and Dave Bargeron the trombone.
Trombonist Bargeron gets a big enough sound all right, but after you have heard him a few times, his staccato-type solos don’t say much melodically. Almost nothing was heard from Soloff’s trumpet. He is one of the group’s most exciting assets and it is hard to understand why he is not utilized more.
Larry Willis is a welcome addition to the group on keyboard and guitarist Georg Wadenius gets a slightly novel sound singing in unison with his own instrumental solos.
This was a small audience and it was not particularly good either, especially the lawn crowd. The noises from the grass was loud enough to distract the performers on several occasions. We walked back there once to see what was going on and one would scarcely know a concert was in session. People were milling around as though it was another county fair.
Appeal Lost
The reason is obvious, much of what BS&T is doing is not appealing to many of the youngsters—in itself not bad. But though you can’t blame a group for tiring of the “golden oldies” after several years and trying new material, the group had better think of something soon if they are to regain any of their previous popularity.
Heard during the concert were Carol King’s Snow Queen, Bob Dylan’s Damming the Flood, a tune called “M” sung by Steve Katz and a song sung in Swedish by guitarist Wadenius called The Crow’s Funeral. The latter had an interesting contrapuntal brass introduction complete with baroque-style trumpet.
Opening the show was Don Cooper, a guitar player, songwriter and singer who sipped a bottle of beer while performing. Cooper is a good coffeehouse material. He actually sang very well but his casual approach soon spread to the audience, and many simply chatted throughout his performance. His segment turned out to be music to seat latecomers by.
It was announced Friday evening that Chuck Berry has been definitely signed to appear on Sept. 15.
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