CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN

"Child is Father to the Man" is the debut full-length studio album by US rock act Blood, Sweat & Tears. The album was released through Columbia Records in February 1968. Blood, Sweat & Tears was formed in 1967 in New York City, with the vision of mixing rock music with big band sounding brass arrangements. They are widely regarded as one of the first rock groups to do it to this extent.

The band´s sound is actually pretty varied with elements from rock, pop, r´n´b, jazz and even a couple of nods toward psychadelia and classical music. The recurring element throughout the album is the brass section though. The band are very well playing and lead vocalist Al Kooper has a smooth voice and a soothing delivery. He can deliver more raw vocals on the most bluesy tracks too though, so he is quite the versatile singer. The material are generally well written and predominantly vers/chorus structured, but not all tracks are equally interesting and the lyrics are for the most part pretty generic "man loves woman" themed (read: Sugar coated). It´s the arrangements of the tracks, the professional, organic and detailed sound production that and the high level musicianship that are the real assets here.

"Child is Father to the Man" is on many levels a great debut album by Blood, Sweat & Tears and for it´s time it was also quite original because of the different musical elements contained within. The core of the tracks aren´t that orignal though and occasionally it´s a bit too nice and lacking edge, but still a 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.