AL KOOPER
Rare & Well Done: The Greatest & Most Obscure Recordings
(Columbia/Legacy)
You may not recognize his name, but chances are pretty good you've heard Al Kooper. Since the early 60s, when as a teenager he abandoned his parents' dreams for a life in rock 'n' roll, he's moved all over the musical landscape, spending time in New York, L.A., Atlanta, Austin, London, Nashville and Boston. Along the way he wrote "This Diamond Ring," a hit for Gary Lewis and the Playboys, and Donny Hathaway's R&B hit "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know." He played the distinctive, highly influential organ on Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," the French horn intro to the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and the keyboards on George Harrison's "All Those Years Ago." He's contributed to hundreds of sessions for artists as diverse as Jimi Hendrix, Green on Red, the Who, Thelonious Monster and Trisha Yearwood. As a producer he's supervised landmark albums by the Tubes, Nils Lofgren, Rick Nelson, BB King, jazz trumpeter Don Ellis and Tom Petty (his first, unreleased album). As an A&R man he discovered and signed Lynyrd Skynyrd to his short-lived Sounds of the South label, producing and playing on their first three albums. He signed the Zombies to Columbia just in time for their masterpiece Odessey and Oracle and brought Richard Thompson his first American major label contract with Polygram Records. He composed music for the 80s cult TV hit Crime Story and scored maverick Hollywood director Hal Ashby's first film The Landlord. He helped guide the Blues Project, one of the first white blues bands, started the Super Session concept with Mike Bloomfield and founded Blood Sweat & Tears, the first (and, for one album at least, best) of the rock big bands. He's made nearly a dozen solo albums, been sampled by the Beastie Boys, the Pharcyde, MC Serch and Jay-Z, and is the author of Backstage Passes, the definitive insider's look at the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. He's spent the last few years teaching songwriting and production at the Berklee College of Music, though he still plays out in Boston and New York with his bands the Rekooperators (featuring Conan O'Brien guitarist Jimmy Vivino) and the Funky Faculty. He's been there and done that in ways most musicians can't even conceive of. He's the living legend in the background of some of the greatest rock stories ever told.

Unfortunately, his status as the man behind the scenes (a role he's perfectly comfortable with) has kept his own music under the radar. The two-disk Rare & Well Done attempts to rectify that situation. To oversimplify, Kooper's music is a beguiling mix of classic black and white pop, a blend of blues, jazz and R&B on the one hand and the 60s rock triumvirate of the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson on the other. By the late 60s he'd already perfected the sound Eric Clapton's been striving for his entire career. The 36 cuts on this set reflect that range. Disk one, the "rare" accumulation, takes the unusual tack of collecting 30 years' worth of demos, live cuts and unreleased studio dates from Kooper's personal archives. Some of the unearthed gems are more lustrous than others, but it's still a treasure trove. He demonstrates his mastery of the beautiful pop song ("Autumn Song," from this year), funk ("The Earthquake of Your Love," from 1979), gospel ("Living in My Own Religion," from 1992) and diverse instrumentals (the 1993 Jeff Beck tribute "Bulgarya" and 1986's "The Big Chase," an unused piece of music from Crime Story). He also offers up two sterling examples of his specialty, the "big blues ballad," with 1972's "A Drive Through the Old Neighborhood" and 1987's exquisite "I Let Love Slip Through My Fingers." He pays tribute to fallen comrades Richard Manuel with the very Band-like "Rachmaninoff's Birthday" from 1995 and Mike Bloomfield with 1984's "They Just Don't Make 'em Like They Used To."

Kooper also rearranges music by some of his influential favorites, turning Ann Peebles' "I Can't Stand the Rain" into a haunted dirge, XTC's "Making Plans For Nigel" (originally earmarked for inclusion on the XTC tribute album A Testimonial Dinner—the band reportedly loved it but the producer didn't) into a jaunty circus singalong, Dylan's "Went to See the Gypsy" into a surging rock epic and the Beatles' "Hey Jude" into a horn-driven jazz instrumental. Not all of his covers work—his version of Ray Charles' "I Believe to My Soul" is too imitative of its author be more than flattering, and not even Kooper can take a song as simple as Big Joe Turner's "Baby Please Don't Go" and make it interesting for eight-and-a-half minutes. The disk makes up for those missteps by including his 2001 remake of his own "I Can't Quit Her," done in the style of modern R&B auteurs like D'Angelo, and his first single under his own name, an entertaining 1965 trifle called "New York's My Home (Razz-A-Ma-Tazz)." This half of the collection is worthy of standing as its own album.

Fortunately for us, though, it doesn't. Disk two consists of highlights from his officially released career. (Though most of this music counts as rare anyway, since his solo records are out of print everywhere but in Japan.) His best-known pieces are present, of course: the Blues Project's quirky 1966 FM standard "Flute Thing," the stinging 1968 Mike Bloomfield showcase "Albert's Shuffle," from Super Session, and the stunning 1967 BS&T ballad "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know." (Super Session's interminably long version of Donovan's "Season of the Witch." featuring Stephen Stills subbing for Bloomfield, is also here, but the less said about that the better.) The pair of cuts from his 1994 live album Soul of a Man, "I Can't Quit Her" and "I Can't Keep From Cryin' Sometimes," stand out as well. But the real treat here is the inclusion of so many long out-of-print gems. 1968's "I Stand Alone," 1969's "Bury My Body" (with Shuggie Otis, from the Kooper Session album), 1971's "New York City (You're a Woman)" and especially 1970's "Brand New Day" shine as perfect examples of his soulful pop genius. His funky 1975 remake of "This Diamond Ring" is revelatory, while 1969's "Love Theme" (from The Landlord) is simply lovely. Even his take on Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman" shows imagination and spirit. Disk two may not have the stylistic breadth of disk one, but for sheer listening pleasure it can't be beat.

Rare & Well Done makes a strong case for Al Kooper as an overlooked major artist. But beyond the historical importance of these tracks, the music is just plain marvelous. Kooper's deep love and understanding of African-American music forms infuses even the poppiest tracks with soul, and his expert arranging skills make the tracks as smooth as silk without being fluffy. His production style nearly always highlights the melodies, and his much-maligned voice holds up quite nicely. Even when it's strained it's never less than real, and over time it's become quite a soulful instrument. To put the final icing on this tasty cake, the booklet is very thorough, with a biography, comments from his many friends and track-by-track commentary from the man himself. Rare & Well Done is the definitive collection of the work of a man who embodies the idea of a musician's life well lived. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: Steve Winwood, Todd Rundgren, Eric Clapton

Copyright © 2001 High Bias