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Blood Sweat and Tears - Midnight Special - Ampeg Stack??

P

Patrice B

Mar 1, 2020
2,053
2,620
53
Montréal, Québec , Canada
#1
It’s been one hour scrolling through amazing live performance I would have like to see… but I was too young, being born in 1973!

Anyway, looks to be two Ampeg’s and, I think, they are V4’s or V4B’s. Your thoughts?

Thanks,

Patrice

***This song takes me back to my college years when I heard it first on the Blood Sweat and Tears Greatest Hits vinyl my friend had!

 
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#2
Patrice B said:
It’s been one hour scrolling through amazing live performance I would have like to see… but I was too young, being born in 1973!

Anyway, looks to be two Ampeg’s and, I think, they are V4’s or V4B’s. Your thoughts?

Thanks,

Patrice

***This song takes me back to my college years when I heard it first on the Blood Sweat and Tears Greatest Hits vinyl my friend had!

Click to expand...

Hmm, so that was March 14, 1975. The downward side of the band’s arc, and at that point, the only two members remaining from the “hits” era were drummer Bobby Colomby and vocalist David Clayton-Thomas, who had already left the band and returned amidst all sorts of personnel upheaval.

If you know that song from a Greatest Hits collection, it was from the very first album, when Al Kooper, who started it all as a four-piece and slowly added the horns, was the singer and keyboardist.

The bass player on stage was not the original, Jim Fielder(who used Guild bass amps for awhile, and possibly Fender Bassmans or Showmans), but probably Ron McClure. Interesting double pickup mod on his Precision. Ampeg heads, of course, but those cabs with 15’s, I have no idea, they don’t look like Ampeg, either they’re on risers or else very tall.

Here is the classic post-Kooper line-up, the best known and most heard, on the Ed Sullivan Show(the TV showcase of those times)in early 1969, with their cover of a Traffic song that, while not a big single, was often heard on the free-form FM radio stations of the period…

 
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#3
Michedelic said:
Hmm, so that was March 14, 1975. The downward side of the band’s arc, and at that point, the only two members remaining from the “hits” era were drummer Bobby Colomby and vocalist David Clayton-Thomas, who had already left the band and returned amidst all sorts of personnel upheaval.

If you know that song from a Greatest Hits collection, it was from the very first album, when Al Kooper, who started it all as a four-piece and slowly added the horns, was the singer and keyboardist.

The bass player on stage was not the original, Jim Fielder(who used Guild bass amps for awhile, and possibly Fender Bassmans or Showmans), but probably Ron McClure. Interesting double pickup mod on his Precision. Ampeg heads, of course, but those cabs with 15’s, I have no idea, they don’t look like Ampeg, either they’re on risers or else very tall.

Here is the classic post-Kooper line-up, the best known and most heard, on the Ed Sullivan Show(the TV showcase of those times)in early 1969, with their cover of a Traffic song that, while not a big single, was often heard on the free-form FM radio stations of the period…

Click to expand...

Thanks! Even if you mention downward side, pretty good live band!
 
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#4
Patrice B said:
It’s been one hour scrolling through amazing live performance I would have like to see… but I was too young, being born in 1973!

Anyway, looks to be two Ampeg’s and, I think, they are V4’s or V4B’s. Your thoughts?

Thanks,

Patrice

***This song takes me back to my college years when I heard it first on the Blood Sweat and Tears Greatest Hits vinyl my friend had!

Click to expand...
 
#5
Michedelic said:
Hmm, so that was March 14, 1975. The downward side of the band’s arc, and at that point, the only two members remaining from the “hits” era were drummer Bobby Colomby and vocalist David Clayton-Thomas, who had already left the band and returned amidst all sorts of personnel upheaval.

If you know that song from a Greatest Hits collection, it was from the very first album, when Al Kooper, who started it all as a four-piece and slowly added the horns, was the singer and keyboardist.

The bass player on stage was not the original, Jim Fielder(who used Guild bass amps for awhile, and possibly Fender Bassmans or Showmans), but probably Ron McClure. Interesting double pickup mod on his Precision. Ampeg heads, of course, but those cabs with 15’s, I have no idea, they don’t look like Ampeg, either they’re on risers or else very tall.

Here is the classic post-Kooper line-up, the best known and most heard, on the Ed Sullivan Show(the TV showcase of those times)in early 1969, with their cover of a Traffic song that, while not a big single, was often heard on the free-form FM radio stations of the period…

Click to expand...

No one plays triangle like David Clayton-Thomas. Lol! He played off the miss on his second hit quite well. Love the tone Jim Fielder gets at about the 3:04 mark.Ed Sullivan was a godsend for a lot rock groups.
 
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#9
Glenn Walker said:
Thanks @Michedelic for posting that vid! Takes me back to 8-tracks and high school, when I was catching up on great music. I missed the incarnation bus by about ten years, but damn, that was a golden decade of music.
Click to expand...
Wow, you were “catching up” with 8-tracks? When was this, late 70’s? You were hipster retro way ahead of the curve😁.
Yeah, that period was grade school/junior high for me, and much of it, even on the FM side, wasn’t that amazing. I will occasionally hear certain things I was nuts about back then, and it’s like, “what was I thinking?” Quite frankly, while I(as I mentioned)caught on to BS&T on the first album, having already heard Kooper’s earlier outfit the Blues Project(courtesy of a friend’s older brother)with guitarist Steve Katz coming from that band as well, I didn’t go the distance. I thought that it was pretty soulful, and I was paying attention to Jim Fielder’s playing in particular, after having heard him on this track….


I thought this was powerful…

…but then there was a band mutiny, and Kooper was out on his ass. That, though, led to an all-time classic, Super Session, with him, Mike Bloomfield and Steve Stills…


That album affected me greatly, as I was just starting to play bass, and besides all the British stuff, Harvey Brooks’ work(along with Larry Taylor from Canned Heat)were my guides.

That was the thing, once David Clayton-Thomas came in on vocals, I soon lost what interest I had in them, in fact he kind of annoyed me. That whole horn band thing was in reasingly becoming overdone anyway, but initially Bloomfield and Brooks’ ensemble The Electric Flag was a brief powerhouse…



Buddy Miles was the original drummer, then he split and put together a killer Memphis-style section…


But the band nobody talks about that were way beyond many others was the Sons Of Champlin, from San Francisco…


I preferred them to Chicago, who just got tedious to me as time went on. Ironically Bill Champlin joined them as vocalist decades later.
 
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#10
Wow! Thånks for an evening of entertainment. We were living in Asia in the mid-70s, and I would have to go down to the market and sort through mainly British rock albums, and the shop owner would make me cassettes. I could rarely buy the album because they could copy it multiple times. My friends who had older siblings would come back from summer "homestay" in the States and bring back music that blew my mind. When I got back to the States in '78, I was just able to get my license, and there was a Radio Shack 8-track in my truck. I think I bought a bunch of cartridges at a garage sale and got introduced to BS&T. I was "culturally behind". What I remember the most about that rig, was I had Joe Walsh's "The Smoker..." album, and Rocky Mountain Way clicked between side one and side two of the cartridge. Still can't get that out of my head.
 
#13
I love BS&T. Brings back memories of childhood vacations to Colorado and Wyoming in our truck bed mounted camper. One that extended way over the cab and a couple feet behind the bed.
When the AM stations boosted the signal at night we could get KOMA from OKC clear as if we were home. BS&T, Three Dog Night, Grassroots, etc.
I LOVED those times.
 
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