Performance of Blood, Sweat, and Tears, on an NBC-Universal show, in 1973. Frank Carroll (NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
Forget the metaphor of the arrow moving forward undaunted: one suspects that the evolution of rock music is cyclical.
That all stylistic varieties reappear with fresh faces (and minimal changes in sensitivity and technology).
All?
For economic reasons, we may not see a
revival
of brass bands, those
horn bands
that sparkled between 1968 and 1974, in the heat of the overwhelming successes of Blood Sweat & Tears and Chicago.
Pay attention to the dates.
Wind instruments gained a place in pop scenes with the rise of southern
soul
, which was symbolically closed with the death of Otis Redding in a plane accident in December 1967. This coincides with a crisis in the jazz business, which It even affects Miles Davis, not used to playing in half-empty clubs.
And every year, numerous jazz musicians graduate, trained in the rigors of university
big bands
, who find themselves with an alarmingly weak job market.
Until producer James William Guercio creates a demand for their services: he rebuilds Blood Sweat & Tears' offering after the group deposes its founding leader, Al Kooper.
Guercio also guides the debut (the first of several double LPs) of Chicago Transit Authority, then simply Chicago, a septet with three brass.
Simultaneously, in the free area of the San Francisco Bay, windy projects such as The Electric Flag, Cold Blood, Sons of Champlin or the indestructible Tower of Power are flourishing.
In Illinois, The Flock emerges, a garage rock group that adds saxophones, trumpet and a violinist (Jerry Goodman) who, alas, ends up monopolizing the image.
It also helps that Van Morrison incorporated brass and slide rhythms starting with
Moondance
(1970).
The phenomenon is contagious: in Canada the megaband Lighthouse takes off, which includes string musicians from the Toronto Symphony (and Howard Shore, future composer of film
scores
for David Cronenberg or Peter Jackson).
CCS is based in London, a
dream team
of studio musicians led by veteran Alexis Korner.
In Spain, the commercial impact of
soul
pushes bold groups to incorporate metals, drawing on the great reserve of Valencian instrumentalists.
The results are not always stimulating: the
Vivos!!!!
of Los Canarios seems produced by its worst enemy.
Even more Martian is Conexión, a group led by Luis Cobos, with Christian messages and enough passion to record a 15-minute display of solos and baptize it as
Concerto One.
In the ideal formulation,
horn bands
were to combine the impetus of rock with the sophistication of jazz.
But an intangible called “attitude” was required and that was not sold in pharmacies: a recent documentary,
What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?
, portrays the mistake of turning behind the Iron Curtain, with the sponsorship of Richard Nixon's administration.
And the saturation of the offer.
The same record label that released Blood Sweat & Tears and Chicago signed the band of the wonderful trumpeter Bill Chase, who did basically the same thing.
As if he were a macabre echo of the Otis Redding tragedy, Chase and several of his musicians were killed in 1974, while flying to give a concert.
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