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Super Session | 
 enlarge | Artists: Bloomfield, Kooper, Stills
Label: Sony
Category: Music
List Price: $11.98
Buy New: $5.37
You Save: $6.61 (55%)
New (41) Used (11) from $3.13
Avg. Customer Rating:  47 reviews
Sales Rank: 2202
Format: Extra Tracks, Original Recording Remastered
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.5 x 4.5 x 0.5
MPN: 63406
UPC: 074646340622
EAN: 0074646340622
ASIN: B00008QSA5
Release Date: April 8, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW, Factory Sealed items direct from the Studios. 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee. Quick International Airmail!
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| Tracks:
| • | Albert's Shuffle - Michael Bloomfield, Bloomfield, Michael | | • | Stop - Michael Bloomfield, Ragovoy, Jerry | | • | Man's Temptation - Michael Bloomfield, Mayfield, Curtis | | • | His Holy Modal Majesty - Michael Bloomfield, Bloomfield, Michael | | • | Really - Michael Bloomfield, Bloomfield, Michael | | • | It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry - Michael Bloomfield, Dylan, Bob | | • | Season of the Witch - Michael Bloomfield, Leitch, Donovan [1] | | • | You Don't Love Me - Michael Bloomfield, Cobbs, W. | | • | Harvey's Tune - Michael Bloomfield, Brooks, Harvey [Bas | | • | Albert's Shuffle - Michael Bloomfield, Bloomfield, Michael | | • | Season of the Witch - Michael Bloomfield, Leitch, Donovan [1] | | • | Blues for Nothing - Michael Bloomfield, Kooper, Al | | • | Fat Grey Cloud - Michael Bloomfield, Bloomfield, Michael |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Album Description
Those familiar with the Live Adventures album these two recorded at the Fillmore West know how brilliant they could be on stage, and here's another gem, recorded at the Fillmore East this time and featuring 'One Way Out,' 'It's My Own Fault' (with Bloomfield trading licks with Johnny Winter...Johnny was signed to Columbia after this gig!). Newly remastered & now with 4 bonus tracks, 'Albert's Shuffle' (2002 Remix w/o Horns), 'Season of the Witch.' (2002 Remix w/o Horns), 'Blues For Nothing' (Studio Outtake) & 'Fat Grey Cloud' Previously Unreleased Live Track). Features 12-page booklet with unpublished photos from the recording session, new liner notes by Al Kooper & the Rolling Stone Hall Of Fame review by David Fricke. 60 scintillating minutes! 13 tracks. Colunbia/Legacy. 2003.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 42 more reviews...
 Stop August 22, 2008
"Stop" never fails to get me, no matter how many listens. Same thing with "Albert's Shuffle", w/ or w/o horns. All in all, a brilliant album.
Listen to this album. July 2, 2008
Seems like a lot of the people who bought this album bought it mostly because of Mike Bloomfield's half of it.
And let me tell you, this is a great half. The instrumentation is nothing new, but the musicians play with this flare that is unique to this album. It's as if all of the players were discovering their amazing powers at music for the first time, all at once.
You can tell they were having a really great time. It shows through in the music.
Stephen Stills side is the less appreciated side of the album (though still appreciated). I'm just going to say that I am extremely glad that they decided to call in Stills to finish this album off, because I have fallen in love with his half.
The layed back, feelin cool, not a care in the world groove of "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" is just ridiculously original. I don't think they could have done a better job on this song, no matter what.
It is a fresh song, with tons of replay value. It's like listening to Rock N Roll for the first time again.
Season of the Witch is another fantastic cover that Stephen and the band took home. It's a lengthy song, with great singing and jamming.
Bonus tracks are definitely worth checking out as well. The whole album is wonderful, and I'd be surprised if it were to let you down in your expectations.
Bloomfield, a perennial favorite for four decades June 9, 2008
I grew up with this recording, as well as all the other original Bloomfield works (PBBB, Electric Flag). It's still a wonderful album, warts and all. I enjoy listening to it now as much as I did then, and it's been forty years, almost exactly. I still have a vinyl copy of it I bought new in 1968 or 1969.
One of the reviewers above pointed out that the purpose of these reviews is to get people to listen to and appreciate this music who might not otherwise do so. How true! I hope that occurs. Bloomfield had a troubled and short life, but he managed to get some masterpieces down on tape before he shuffled off this mortal coil: the early Butterfield records, Electric Flag, and these sessions. No one else sounds like Bloomfield; for better or worse, he was his own man. These tracks show his best side, beyond doubt.
It's worth noting that Robben Ford, an extraordinary contemporary blues and jazz guitar master, cites Bloomfield as an early influence and one of the reasons he switched from playing reeds to guitar. Listening to these tracks, you can see why. And after all these years, these tracks still have their poignancy and ringing sad sweetness.
Awesome! May 1, 2008
What can I say ?
It's like getting two albums in one.
"It takes a lot to laugh..." best song. How do you get from Dylan to Steven Stills to Little Feat? Answer.. see above.
Albert's Shuffle, best blues number. Tribute to Albert King.
"His Holy Modal Majesty" best acid fade to jazz. No, it's not from "Easy Rider". Get the first Blood Sweat & Tears album for more Al Kooper.
 Kooper+Bloomfield+Stills=Super Session April 11, 2008
I first bought Super Session (and its semi-sequel "The Live Adventures") on vinyl at a garage sale for $1, primarily after reading Al Kooper's book "Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards" detailing the sessions. After 1-2 plays of each I found myself saying "I bought these because...?" Don't get me wrong, each is full of well played music, but the legend of these albums seems to have overtaken the facts. So years later when I bought the CD's (for whatever reason) I was saying the same things. But a funny thing happened, Super Session seemed to grow on me. And it found a regular place in my bag of CD's (no Ipod just yet). The more you listen, the more you find yourself getting into the groove of the music within.
Super Session was the brainchild of producer Al Kooper. Having been kicked out of Blood Sweat & Tears, frustrated in his job as a staff producer at CBS Records, and without enough material for a solo album he hit upon an idea that had been a mainstay of jazz players. Gather a group of like-minded musicians together and jam on whatever songs were available for a quickie album. But this had never been tried in a rock context. And Kooper was eager to show what his friend Michael Bloomfield was capable of. Bloomfield had been kicked out of his own band Electric Flag, and was game for the idea. They added bassist Harvey Brooks and drummer Eddie Hoh to complete the band, then started recording in California. They knocked off 5 songs the first day and Kooper thought this would be easy. Until the next day when he got a phone call asking if Michael had made his plane home. Bloomfield had left, citing chronic insomnia. Kooper desperately contacted every guitarist he could think of, eventually getting a commitment from another musical orphan, Stephen Stills. Stills' band Buffalo Springfield had just split up and he was a year away from forming CSN.
Super Session was an unlikely success when first released in 1968. No hit singles came from it. Each member of the "band" remains (except for Stills) a trivia question. Its musical structure starts as hard-edged Chicago blues (courtesy of Bloomfield) then veers in country rock and psychedelics (via Stills & Kooper). And yet it hit #11 on the album charts and became a fixture on underground FM stations that year. Bloomfield turns in some stinging blues on the opener "Albert's Shuffle" and on "Really".
The 2nd half belongs to Stills and Kooper as they mix it up on covers of Dylan's "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry", Donovan's "Season of the Witch". And the blues standard "You Don't Love Me" gets the phased guitar sound here. (Compare this to the Allman Brothers version on "Live at the Fillmore"). You can clearly hear Stills' Buffalo Springfield guitar sound here as well as the beginnings of the sound he had later with CSN. In Kooper's book he says that "Stills had just gotten his first set of Marshall amps and was chompin' at the bit to blast his Les Paul through 'em".
The expanded version of this album adds 4 songs. 2 are alternate mixes of "Albert's Shuffle" and "Season of the Witch" that eliminate the horn sections. A live cut called "Fat Grey Cloud" comes from a 1968 Fillmore West show. And an unreleased instrumental "Blues for Nothing" that sounds like an alternate "Albert's".
The legend of this album continued with the "Live Adventures" album a year later (Bloomfield left again after playing on half this album too) and with the more recently released "Lost Fillmore Show" disc (which is a complete Kooper/Bloomfield show adding an then-unknown Johnny Winter as a special guest ).
Like I said, this album grows on you. It comes from a time we won't see again when musicians with nothing to lose just met to play and see what might happen.
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