Blood

Ten previously unissued live recordings from 1970 recorded in Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland.

From their beginnings as an attempt at bold jazz-rock fusion in 1967 through a run as a high-powered R&B/soul-rock singles act with singer David Clayton-Thomas two years later, Blood, Sweat & Tears were always a kind of fascinating experiment, and a commercially successful one at that. The first album from the Clayton-Thomas-fronted band appeared in 1969, spawned four high chart hits, won a Grammy as Album of the Year, and went on to sell some three million units. The next two albums, Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 and 4, generated a few more hits, but the band was gradually running out of creative steam by this point, and when Clayton-Thomas left the group after the fourth album, well, that was the end of the line commercially for Blood, Sweat & Tears. A jazzier, but definitely not as commercial, version of Blood, Sweat & Tears showed up for two of the albums collected in this set, 1972's New Blood and 1973's No Sweat, with the third album here, 1976's More Than Ever, featuring the return of David Clayton-Thomas to the fold.

The difference between Blood, Sweat & Tears and the group's preceding long-player, Child Is Father to the Man, is the difference between a monumental seller and a record that was "merely" a huge critical success. Arguably, the Blood, Sweat & Tears that made this self-titled second album – consisting of five of the eight original members and four newcomers, including singer David Clayton-Thomas – was really a different group from the one that made Child Is Father to the Man, which was done largely under the direction of singer/songwriter/keyboard player/arranger Al Kooper…