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No American rock group ever started with as much daring or musical promise as Blood, Sweat & Tears, or realized their potential more fully -- and then blew it all as quickly. From their origins as a jazz-rock experiment that wowed critics and listeners, they went on -- in a somewhat more pop vein -- to sell almost six million records in three years, but ended up being dropped by their record label four years after that. Blood, Sweat & Tears started as an idea conceived by Al Kooper in July of 1967. An ex-member of the Blues Project, Kooper had been toying with the notion, growing out of his admiration for jazz bandleader Maynard Ferguson, of forming an electric rock band that would include horns and use jazz as the basis for their work. He planned to pursue this in London, but a series of New York shows involving some big-name friends didn't raise enough money to get him there. He did, however, find three players who wanted to work with him: bassist Jim Fielder, Blues Project guitarist Steve Katz, and drummer Bobby Colomby. Kooper agreed, as long as he was in charge musically. The horn section featured Fred Lipsius (saxophone), with Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss on trumpets and flügelhorns, and Dick Halligan playing trombone. The new group was signed to Columbia Records, and the name "Blood, Sweat & Tears" came to Kooper after a jam at the Cafe au Go Go, where a cut on his hand left his organ keyboard covered in blood.

That first version of Blood, Sweat & Tears played music that roamed freely through realms of jazz, R&B, soul, and even psychedelia in ways that had scarcely been heard before in one band. The songs were bold and challenging, and the arrangements gave Lipsius, Brecker, et. al room to solo, while Kooper's organ and Katz's guitar swelled in pulsing, shimmering glory. Their debut, Child Is Father to the Man, was released in February 1968, and seemed to portend a great future. The only thing it didn't have was a hit single to get AM radio play and help drive sales.

Disagreements about repertory grew into doubts about Kooper's ability as a lead singer, and soon split this band. Kooper left in March of 1968, and Brecker followed him out. That might've been the end of the story, except that Colomby and Katz decided to salvage a band of their own band out of this debacle. The lineup was reshuffled and expanded, and for a lead singer they found a Canadian national named David Clayton-Thomas.

The new Blood, Sweat & Tears recorded their album in late 1968. Blood, Sweat & Tears, released in January 1969, was smoother and more traditionally melodic than its predecessor. Equally important, the singles from the album were edited, removing the featured spots for the jazz players. "You've Made Me So Very Happy" rose to number two and lofted the album to the top of the LP listings. "Spinning Wheel" b/w "More and More" and "And When I Die" followed, and when the smoke cleared, the album had yielded a career's worth of hits. The LP also won the Grammy as Album of the Year, selling three million copies in the bargain.

In the spring of 1970, however, the group lost a huge amount of momentum with its core audience, college students, when they undertook a tour of Eastern Europe on behalf of the U.S. State Department. The Vietnam War was still raging, and anything to do with the government was potentially poisonous on college campuses. It was on their return to America, amid this dubious career move -- which was done to overcome the problem of Clayton-Thomas' shaky immigration status -- that Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 was released. It briefly topped the LP charts, and the single "Hi-De-Ho" reached number 14, but both sold only a fraction of what their earlier releases had done. Additionally, the group was now criticized in the rock press, which felt that Blood, Sweat & Tears were either a pretentious pop group that dabbled in horn riffs, or a jazz outfit trying to pass as a rock band. The group's decision to perform at a Las Vegas casino -- which even upset the head of Columbia Records, Clive Davis -- did nothing to defuse these doubts.

Clayton-Thomas exited after the fourth album to pursue a solo career. Most of the group's original and second-generation players were gone by then as well, though the playing standard remained consistently high. The lineup became a revolving door -- even Jaco Pastorius passed through their ranks, briefly -- and the group's record sales imploded, squeezed as they were by Chicago on the pop side of jazz-rock, and outfits such as Weather Report and Return to Forever on the more musically ambitious side of the spectrum. Clayton-Thomas returned in 1974, to what was billed officially as "Blood, Sweat & Tears Featuring David Clayton-Thomas." They released New City (1975), which did well enough to justify an ambitious tour that yielded the double-LP Live and Improvised. Columbia Records dropped the group in 1976, and even Bobby Colomby, who had trademarked the group's name, gave up playing with them. Clayton-Thomas has kept the group name alive in the decades since, fronting various lineups. ~ Bruce Eder

David Clayton-Thomas fronted Blood, Sweat & Tears during their popular peak, singing the hits "You've Made Me So Very Happy," "And When I Die," "Hi-De-Ho," and his composition "Spinning Wheel." The latter suggested the musical ambitions he harbored and after the group's hot streak cooled in 1972, he set out on a solo career that he quickly put on ice so he could return to the group in 1975. From that point forward, Clayton-Thomas alternated between Blood, Sweat & Tears and a solo career, eventually leaving the band for good in 2004. Once he departed, he stayed on the road as a solo attraction, occasionally entering the studio for a new recording.

Clayton-Thomas -- who was born David Henry Thomsett in Kingston Upon Thames, Surrey, England on September 13, 1941-- was the son of a Canadian soldier and a musician mother. Raised in Willowdale, Toronto, he feuded with his father and had a troubled adolescence, finding solace in music. He began playing and, like other fledgling Canadian rockers of the early '60s, he was mentored by rockabilly cat Ronnie Hawkins, then headed out to start his own band. Adopting the stage name David Clayton-Thomas, he formed the Fabulous Shays, who released a cover of John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom" in 1964. It got enough attention for the group to appear on NBC's Hullabaloo, but Clayton-Thomas soon left the group and gravitated toward folk and blues. After playing Toronto coffee houses for a spell, he decided to form the jazz-inspired Bossmen, who had a hit with "Brainwashed" in 1966. Clayton-Thomas released an album called Sings Like It Is! on Canada's Roman Records in 1968 then headed down to New York City, playing folk venues until he met Blood, Sweat & Tears drummer Bobby Colomby. At the time, Blood, Sweat & Tears were looking for a vocalist to replace the recently departed Al Kooper, and once Columbia's head Clive Davis signed off on Clayton-Thomas, he joined the group -- but not before Decca put out an LP called David Clayton-Thomas!

Blood, Sweat & Tears -- the singer's first album with the band and their second album -- arrived in December 1968 and was a smash hit, reaching number one on the Billboard charts, winning the 1970 Grammy for Album of the Year and spinning off the hits "You've Made Me So Very Happy," "Spinning Wheel," and "And When I Die," which all peaked at number two in 1969. Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 came in 1970, producing the modest hits "Hi-De-Ho" (which peaked at 14) and "Lucretia Mac Evil" (29). The band's momentum slowed with 1971's B, S, & T 4, and Clayton-Thomas left after its 1971 release. The singer released an eponymous album in early 1972, followed by Tequila Sunrise at the dawn of the new year, before departing for RCA in 1973, where he released Harmony Junction. Also in 1973, he hosted the CBC music television series The David Clayton-Thomas Show. Clayton-Thomas rejoined Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1975, making his second debut on that year's New City LP. Two more albums followed quickly -- More Than Ever in 1976 and Brand New Day 1977 -- before Bobby Colomby left the group, retaining the rights to the band's name.

Clayton-Thomas released another solo album called Clayton on ABC in 1977, then received permission from Colomby to form a new Blood, Sweat & Tears for 1980's Nuclear Blues. The band officially split following that record, but the singer decided to return to performing in 1983, entering a period where he'd tour solo but see promoters bill him as Blood, Sweat & Tears. The singer and Bobby Colomby wound up agreeing to a 1984 deal where Clayton-Thomas could tour with a revolving lineup under the Blood, Sweat & Tears name, a deal that held for 30 years. In 2004, Clayton-Thomas stopped using the name, returned to his hometown of Toronto, and began working under his own name, touring and releasing records on a steady basis for the next few decades. He had returned to solo recordings a little bit earlier, releasing Blue Plate on Stony Plain in 1997, but his first album since leaving Blood, Sweat & Tears behind was 2005's Aurora. Spectrum followed in 2009, with Soul Ballads hot on its heels in 2010. He released a blues album called A Blues for the New World in 2013, assembled a combo called Combo for 2015's Combo, releasing the solo Soul Ballads by the end of the year. In October 2016, he released the full-length Canadiana, a record filled with covers of songs written by Canadian songwriters. He followed the album in December with "Ode to the Donald," a song of protest against the American election of Donald J. Trump. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine