Folk Group Helps SPAC Set Record

by Marilyn Nason, The Post-Star, August 28, 1970

Blood, Sweat and Tears drew nearly 16,000 last night at Saratoga Performing Arts Center (third straight 15,000-plus house this week, an all-time SPAC record). And you just simply have to like these nine versatile, hard-working performers.

David Clayton-Thomas is lead singer, looks like a football player and possesses a very unusual voice that is capable of vocal perfection from scat singing and spirituals to the largest rock and soul sounds imaginable.

And he’s backed by nine very instrumentally versatile guys, who play everything from piano and organ to harmonica, guitar, flute, drums, bongos, sax, trombone, trumpet and tambourine with equal ease.

Wide Age Span

Needless to say the stage is pretty much taken up with these assorted instruments, the usual umpteen microphones and amplifiers but the results are very pleasant. Looking around last night’s audience, at least those seated in the theatre itself, one could see the wide span of ages, type of dress and cross-section of people who had come to enjoy this group and herein lies the success of this group, when so many hundreds of others rise and fall in swift fashion.

They play something for everyone, blend it in with some strong instrumental combo, big band, jazz and solo sounds and add a touch of humor and good-natured enjoyment for frosting.

They offered tunes like “More and More,” “Something Coming On,” “Can’t Forget Her,” a particularly lovely, quiet “Sometime in Winter,” “And When I Die,” “Hi De Ho” and “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” the latter three really bringing down the house.

Geared for Lawn Crowd

As always, it seems that the sound is geared entirely to the lawn audience for groups such as this which provides a too-loud, distorted sound within the amphitheatre on many occasions, but apparently, for those of us who attend nightly, this is not to be rectified for 5,000 in-house, when 10,000 lawn-goers also must be able to hear.

Offstage, the nine, plus their soundman and other assistants, proved to be polite, modest young men and this, too, wasmost refreshing.

Opening act was young guitarist-vocalist Don Cooper, who had a bit of a problem keeping the lawn crowd quiet at first for his very fine performance. Well-known in the area, he has appeared on many college campuses and offers a relaxed, lucid style.

And the ever-present traveling photographers were with us again last night, this time one kept crawling and creeping
around the stage. At one point, he even lay stretched right out flat on the stage to get what has to be considered a most unusual angle of young Don Cooper’s back, as he sat perched on a stool at the mike playing and singing. Will be interesting to see if that picture is ever printed anywhere.

Tonight Jose Feliciano appears in concert at 8:30.