Al Kooper

Not to be confused with Al Cooper or Alice Cooper.

Al Kooper
Al Kooper at an interview in 2009
Background information
Also known as	Roosevelt Gook
Born	(1944-02-05) February 5, 1944 Brooklyn, New York, United States
Genres	Blues, R&B, pop rock
Occupation(s)	Musician, songwriter, producer
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, bass, Hammond organ, keyboards, percussion, mandolin
Years active	1958–present
Labels	ABC Records
Associated acts	Mike Bloomfield, The Blues Project, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Bob Dylan
Website	alkooper.com

Al Kooper (born Alan Peter Kuperschmidt, February 5, 1944) is an American songwriter, record producer and musician, known for organizing Blood, Sweat & Tears (although he did not stay with the group long enough to share its popularity), providing studio support for Bob Dylan when he went electric in 1965, and bringing together guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills to record the Super Session album. He has had a successful solo career since then, written music for film soundtracks, and has lectured in musical composition. He continues to perform live.

Life and career

Kooper, born in Brooklyn, grew up in a Jewish family in Hollis Hills, Queens, New York. His first musical success was as a fourteen-year-old guitarist in the Royal Teens, best known for their 1958 ABC Records novelty twelve-bar blues riff, "Short Shorts". In 1960, he joined the songwriting team of Bob Brass and Irwin Levine and wrote "This Diamond Ring", which became a hit for Gary Lewis and the Playboys. When he was twenty-one, Kooper moved to Greenwich Village.

He performed with Bob Dylan in concert in 1965, including playing Hammond organ with Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, and in the recording studio in 1965 and 1966. Kooper also played the Hammond organ riffs on Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone". It was in those recording sessions that Kooper met and befriended Mike Bloomfield, whose guitar playing he admired. He worked extensively with Bloomfield for several years. Kooper played organ once again with Dylan during his 1981 world tour.

Kooper joined the Blues Project as their keyboardist in 1965; he left the band shortly before their gig at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. He formed Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1967, leaving due to creative differences in 1968, after the release of the group's first album, Child Is Father to the Man. He recorded Super Session with Bloomfield and Stills in 1968, and in 1969 he collaborated with 15-year-old guitarist Shuggie Otis on the album Kooper Session. In 1975 he produced the debut album by the Tubes.

Kooper (with guitar) celebrating his 68th birthday at the Regatta Bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Feb. 4, 2012

Kooper has played on hundreds of records, including ones by the Rolling Stones, B. B. King, the Who, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Alice Cooper, and Cream. On occasion, he has even overdubbed his own efforts, as on The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper and other albums, under the pseudonym "Roosevelt Gook". After moving to Atlanta in 1972, he discovered the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, and produced and performed on their first three albums, including the single "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Free Bird".

He wrote the score for the TV series Crime Story and for the film The Landlord and wrote music for several made-for-television movies. He was the musical force behind many of the pop tunes, including "You're the Lovin' End", for The Banana Splits, a children's television program.

During the late 1980s Kooper had his own dedicated keyboard studio room in the historic Sound Emporium recording studio in Nashville, next to studio B.

"I'm so pleased to be in Britain, I could just sit and pour tea over my head."

Al Kooper

Kooper published a memoir, Backstage Passes: Rock 'n' Roll Life in the Sixties (1977), which was revised and published as Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock 'n' Roll Survivor (1998). The revised edition includes indictments of "manipulators" in the music industry, including his one-time business manager, Stan Polley. Kooper's status as a published author enabled him to join (and act as musical director of) the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band made up of writers, including Dave Barry, Stephen King, Amy Tan, and Matt Groening.

Kooper celebrating his 68th birthday at the Regatta Bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Feb. 4, 2012

Kooper is retired from teaching songwriting and recording production at Berklee College of Music, in Boston, and plays weekend concerts with his bands the ReKooperators and the Funky Faculty. In 2008, he participated in the production of the album Psalngs, the debut release of Canadian musician John Lefebvre.

Kooper was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum, in Nashville, in 2008.

In 2005 Martin Scorsese produced a documentary, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, for the PBS American Masters Series, Kooper's most notable playing with Dylan is the organ parts on "Like a Rolling Stone". Kooper had been invited to the session as an observer and hoped to be allowed to sit in on guitar, his primary instrument. He uncased his guitar and began tuning it. After hearing Mike Bloomfield, who was the hired session guitarist, warming up, he concluded that Bloomfield at that point was a much better guitarist, so Kooper put his guitar aside and retreated into the control room.

As the recording sessions progressed, keyboardist Paul Griffin was moved from the Hammond organ to piano. Kooper quickly suggested to producer Tom Wilson that he had a "great organ part" for the song (which he later confessed was just a ruse to play in the session), and Wilson responded, "Al, you're not an organ player, you're a guitar player", but Kooper stood his ground. Before Wilson could explicitly reject Kooper's suggestion, he was interrupted by a phone call in the control room. Kooper immediately went into the studio and sat down at the organ, though he had rarely played organ before the session. When Wilson returned, he was shocked to find Kooper in the studio. By this time, Kooper had been playing along with Dylan and his backing band. His organ can be heard coming in an eighth note behind the other members of the band, as Kooper followed to make sure he was playing the proper chords. During a playback of tracks in the control room, when asked about the organ track, Dylan was emphatic: "Turn the organ up!"

Discography

Solo

Studio albums

• I Stand Alone (February 1969)
• You Never Know Who Your Friends Are (October 1969)
• Easy Does It (September 1970)
• New York City (June 1971)
• A Possible Projection of the Future / Childhood's End (April 1972)
• Naked Songs (1973)
• Act Like Nothing's Wrong (January 1977)
• Championship Wrestling (featuring Jeff "Skunk" Baxter) (1982)
• Rekooperation (June 1994)

• Black Coffee (August 2005)
• White Chocolate (2008)

Live albums

• Soul of a Man (February 1995)

Collaborative

• Super Session (with Stephen Stills and Mike Bloomfield) (1968)
• The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper (February 1969)
• Fillmore East: The Lost Concert Tapes 12/13/68 (with Mike Bloomfield, recorded 1968, issued April 2003)
• Kooper Session (with Shuggie Otis) (1969)
• Let it Bleed (1969), by the Rolling Stones, horn, piano and organ on "You Can't Always Get What You Want"
• Johnnie B. Live (with Johnnie Johnson) (1997)
• Blood, Sweat & Tears (1968)

Compilations

• Al's Big Deal – Unclaimed Freight/An Al Kooper Anthology (1975)

Also appears on

• Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd – Lynyrd Skynyrd (1973)
• Second Helping – Lynyrd Skynyrd (1974)
• Nuthin' Fancy – Lynyrd Skynyrd (1975)
• 4 on the Floor – 4 on the Floor (1979)
• Rare and Well Done (September 2001)
• He's a Rebel: The Gene Pitney Story Retold (2002)
• Freak Out – Chris Catena (2004)

Sources

• Mike Bloomfield, Me and Big Joe, Re/Search Publications, 1999, ISBN 1-889307-05-X , ISBN 978-1-889307-05-3.
• Michael Bloomfield, If You Love These Blues: An Oral History, Backbeat Books, 2000, ISBN 978-0-87930-617-5 (with CD of uniussed music).
• Ken Brooks, The Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper with Paul Butterfield and David Clayton Thomas, Agenda, 1999, ISBN 1-899882-90-1, ISBN 978-1-899882-90-8.
• Al Kooper, Backstage Passes: Rock 'n' Roll Life in the Sixties, Stein & Day, 1977, ISBN 0-8128-2171-8, ISBN 978-0-8128-2171-0.
• Al Kooper, Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock 'n' Roll Survivor (updated ed.), Billboard Books, 1998, ISBN 0-8230-8257-1, ISBN 978-0823082575.
• Al Kooper, Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards (new ed.), Hal Leonard, 2008, ISBN 0-87930-922-9, ISBN 978-0-87930-922-0.
• Ed Ward, Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero, Cherry Lane Books,1983, ISBN 0-89524-157-9, ISBN 978-0895241573.

External links

• Official Al Kooper website
• Al Kooper's Myspace page with Bio
• Extensive audio interview with Terry Gross on NPR's 'Fresh Air' program, January 3, 2004
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience by Al Kooper