Child Is Father to the Man is the debut album by Blood, Sweat & Tears, released in February 1968. It reached number 47 on the Billboard albums chart in the United States.
History
As a teenager, Al Kooper went to a concert for jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson and this experience inspired Kooper to start a rock band with a horn section. Originally in a band called The Blues Project, Kooper left after band leader Danny Kalb rejected his idea of bringing in a horn section.
The title is a quotation from a similarly titled poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, slightly misquoting a poem by William Wordsworth called "My Heart Leaps Up".
CBS Records released The Rock Machine Turns You On, the first budget sampler LP, in the UK in 1968. The song "My Days Are Numbered" was included as Side Two track one on the album and introduced BS&T to a much wider audience.
The album was re-released in the UK in 1973, entitled "The First Album" on Embassy Records, a subsidiary of Columbia Records (catalogue number EMB 31028) with an identical track listing and the same picture on the front of the sleeve. The rear had new sleeve notes written by English DJ, Noel Edmonds.
Reception
Writing for AllMusic, critic William Ruhlman wrote of the album:<blockquote>"Al Kooper's finest work, an album on which he moves the folk-blues-rock amalgamation of the Blues Project into even wider pastures, taking in classical and jazz elements (including strings and horns), all without losing the pop essence that makes the hybrid work. This is one of the great albums of the eclectic post-Sgt. Pepper era of the late '60s, a time when you could borrow styles from Greenwich Village contemporary folk to San Francisco acid rock and mix them into what seemed to have the potential to become a new American musical form... This is the sound of a group of virtuosos enjoying itself in the newly open possibilities of pop music. Maybe it couldn't have lasted; anyway, it didn't."
Track listing
All tracks written by Al Kooper, except where noted.
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Certifications
Covers
- In 2015, "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" performed by Italian singer Luca Ronka in Soul Man album
- In 2013, "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" on the album Seesaw by Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa
- In 2008, "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" on the album Bad for You Baby by Gary Moore
- In 1973, "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" on the album Extension of a Man by Donny Hathaway
- In 2007, "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" was recorded live in Paris in September 2007 by Amy Winehouse