Kooper, Al

Kooper, Al, rock producer/keyboardist/songwriter/session musician/band leader with a checkered career; b. Brooklyn, N.Y., Feb. 5, 1944. An accomplished guitarist by age 13, Al Kooper turned professional when he joined The Royal Teens at 15, a year after the group scored a novelty smash with “Short Shorts,” Kooper subsequently worked as a sessions guitarist for the likes of Connie Francis and Dion. Also, he coauthored Gary Lewis and The Playboy’s first hit (a smash), “This Diamond Ring,” from 1965.

In the mid-1960s, Al Kooper played folk clubs as Al Casey and met Bob Dylan through producer Tom Wilson. He accompanied Dylan on keyboards at his controversial Newport Folk Festival appearance in June 1965 and assisted in the recording of Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited album and its classic single, “Like a Rolling Stone.” Later, Kooper helped record Dylan’s monumental Blonde on Blonde album. In 1966 Kooper joined The Blues Project, one of the earliest white electric blues and folk bands. With member Steve Katz, for 1968 Kooper formed Blood, Sweat and Tears, probably the first jazz-rock band, with fellow Blues Project member Steve Katz.

After Blood, Sweat and Tears’ debut album, Kooper left the group to accept a lucrative offer from Columbia Records to become a producer, although none of his projects proved successful. In 1968, he played sessions for Moby Grape (Wow/Grape Jam) and adopted the format for one of the first successful “jam” albums, Super Session, recorded with guitarists Stephen Stills and Mike Bloomfield. He also played sessions for The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Paul Butterfield, Jimi Hendrix, Taj

Mahal, and The Rolling Stones. He also recorded a live album with Bloomfield. Initiating his own recording career by 1969, Kooper introduced Johnny Otis’s guitar-playing son Shuggie in 1970.

In 1972, Al Kooper “discovered” and signed Lynyrd Skynyrd to MCA’s newly formed Sound of the South label, producing their first three albums. He organized a reunion of The Blues Project in 1973 and later produced The Tubes’ debut album and Nils Lofgren’s Cry Tough. Releasing his final solo album in more than a decade in 1982, Kooper moved to Nashville in 1990 and subsequently became music director of The Rock Bottom Remainders, a band comprised of authors Steven King, Dave Barry, and Amy Tan, among others. He returned to recording with 1994’s largely instrumental Rekoopera-tion and 1995’s Soul of a Man.

Discography

kooper, bloomfield and stills:

Super Session (1968). al kooper and mike bloomfield:Don’t Say that I Ain’t Your Man (1964); Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper (1969); Bloomfield: A Retrospective (1984). al kooper: I Stand Alone (1969); You Never Know Who Your Friends Are (1969); Live Adventures (1969); Kooper Session: Al Kooper Introduces Shuggie Otis (1970); Landlord (soundtrack; 1970); Easy Does It (1970); New York City (You’re a Woman) (1971); A Possible Projection of the Future/Childhood’s End (1972); Naked Songs (1973); Al’s Big Deal (Unclaimed Freight) (1975); Act Like Nothing’s Wrong (1976); Four on the Floor (1979); Championship Wrestling (1982); Rekooperation (1994); Soul of a Man: Al Kooper Live (1995); Kooper Sessions, Vol. 2 (1999). the blues project:Live at Cafe Au-Go-Go (1966); Projections (1966); Best of the Blues Project (1966); Live at Town Hall (1967); Original Blues Project Reunion in Central Park (1973). blood, sweat & tears:Child Is Father to the Mother (1968); Blood, Sweat & Tears (1969); Blood Sweat & Tears 4 (1971); Classic BST (1980); Live and Improvised (1991); What Goes Up: The Best of Blood, Sweat & Tears (1995). al kooper and steve katz:Al Kooper & Steve Katz (1969). appaloosa:Appaloosa (1971).

Writings

With B. Edmonds., Backstage Passes: Rock ’n’ Roll Life in the Sixties (N.Y., 1977; rev. as Backstage Passes and Back-Stabbing Bastards, N.Y., 1999).

—Brock Helander