Child Is Father to the Man is keyboard player/singer/arranger
Al Kooper's finest work, an album on which he moves the folk-blues-rock amalgamation of
the Blues Project into even wider pastures, taking in classical and jazz elements (including strings and horns), all without losing the pop essence that makes the hybrid work. This is one of the great albums of the eclectic post-
Sgt. Pepper era of the late '60s, a time when you could borrow styles from Greenwich Village contemporary folk to San Francisco acid rock and mix them into what seemed to have the potential to become a new American musical form. It's
Kooper's bluesy songs, such as "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" and "I Can't Quit Her," and his singing that are the primary focus, but the album is an aural delight; listen to the way the bass guitar interacts with the horns on "My Days Are Numbered" or the charming arrangement and
Steve Katz's vocal on
Tim Buckley's "Morning Glory." Then
Kooper sings
Harry Nilsson's "Without Her" over a delicate, jazzy backing with flügelhorn/alto saxophone interplay by
Randy Brecker and
Fred Lipsius. This is the sound of a group of virtuosos enjoying itself in the newly open possibilities of pop music. Maybe it couldn't have lasted; anyway, it didn't. [Columbia/Legacy's 2000 reissue adds three bonus tracks from their November 1967 audition: the instrumental "Refugee From Yuhupitz" and alternate versions of "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" and "The Modern Adventures of Plato, Diogenes and Freud."] ~ William Ruhlmann