Blood, Sweat & Tears - New City [4]

Title: Blood, Sweat & Tears - New City
Year/Genre/Sub-Genre/City: 1975, Jazz Rock, Blue-Eyed Soul, New York, New York 10/26
Matrix #: N/A (Columbia US red label, in shrink; catalog and runout not legible in photo)
Condition: EX (LM) | Members: David C (41' - 26'), Bobby C (44' - ), Dave B (42' - ), Ron M (41' - ), Georg W (45' - 26'), Larry W (42' - 19') | Producer: Jimmy Ienner
Cultural Facts: [4]

1. A Guitar Left Behind in Reform School: David Clayton-Thomas was born David Thomsett in Kingston upon Thames, England, to a Canadian soldier and a pianist mother who met when she came to entertain troops at a London hospital. After the family moved to Toronto, he fled an abusive father by fourteen, slept in parked cars and abandoned buildings, and spent much of his teens in jails and reformatories including the Burwash Industrial Farm. He taught himself on an old guitar another inmate left behind, and later changed his last name to put distance between himself and those years.
2. Judy Collins Made the Call: In 1968 folk singer Judy Collins heard him at a club in uptown Manhattan and told her friend Bobby Colomby, whose band had just lost three members four months after its first album. His first record with them sold about ten million copies. Because of his Canadian criminal record and an earlier deportation for overstaying a visa, the State Department later pressured the band into a 1970 Eastern Europe tour in exchange for his residency permit, and antiwar rock fans slammed the band for letting the Nixon government use them.
3. Jazz Heavyweights in the Horn Band: This album marked Clayton-Thomas's return after leaving in 1972, and the band behind him was stacked. Bassist Ron McClure had played in Charles Lloyd's classic quartet with Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette and briefly worked in Thelonious Monk's quartet, and his tune No Show from this record earned a 1976 Grammy nomination for arrangement. Swedish guitarist Georg Wadenius went on to join the Saturday Night Live band in 1979 and played with Steely Dan and Aretha Franklin.