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Super Session is an album by the singer and multi-instrumentalist Al Kooper, with the guitarists Mike Bloomfield on the first half and Stephen Stills on the second half. Released by Columbia Records in 1968, it peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard 200 during a 37-week chart stay and was certified gold by RIAA.
Kooper booked two days of studio time at CBS Columbia Square in Los Angeles in May 1968, and recruited keyboardist Barry Goldberg and bassist Harvey Brooks, both members of the Electric Flag, along with well-known session drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh. On the first day, the quintet recorded a group of mostly blues-based instrumental tracks. It included the modal excursion "His Holy Modal Majesty", which was a tribute to modal jazz musician John Coltrane, who had died the previous year, and was also reminiscent of "East-West" from the second Butterfield Blues Band album. On the second day, with the tapes ready to roll, Bloomfield returned to his home in Mill Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area, saying he had been unable to sleep.
Needing to have something to show for the second day of booked studio time, Kooper hastily called upon Stephen Stills, who was in the process of leaving his band, Buffalo Springfield, to replace Bloomfield. Regrouping behind Stills, Kooper's session men cut mostly vocal tracks, including "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" from Highway 61 and a lengthy and atmospheric take of "Season of the Witch" by Donovan. Although Harvey Brooks's closing "Harvey's Tune" includes overdubbed horns added in New York City while the album was being mixed, the album only cost $13,000 to complete.
The success of the album opened the door for the "supergroup" concept of the late 1960s and 1970s, as exemplified by the likes of Blind Faith and . Despite the fact that Bloomfield left the recording session after the first day, he and Kooper made several concert appearances after the album was released. The results of one of those became the album The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper.
In the early 2000s, it was intended that it would be remixed for the new 5.1 channel version to be released on SACD. But in late 2004, Al Kooper commented:
Both 5.1 remixed SACDs were released in 2014 by Audio Fidelity. The original quadraphonic mix of Super Session was released on Hybrid SACD by Sony Records Int'l in 2023.
The album has been compared to other albums of jam sessions of the era, namely Moby Grape's Grape Jam (1968), George Harrison's Apple Jam (1970) and members of the Rolling Stones (with Ry Cooder and Nicky Hopkins) with Jamming with Edward! (1971). Don Ottenhoff of The Grand Rapids Press, writing in 1971, questioned the idea of "musicians getting together and just letting the tapes run", adding that although Super Session and Grape Jam were "more musically solid than most jam records, they both were tinged with an element of tediousness."
In 2005, Dan Daley of Sound on Sound credited Super Session for "putting the jazz-based notion of the jam session squarely into the mainstream rock of rock." Daley praised Stills for accepting Kooper's invitation to join the jam, saying it "turned what would have been a musically astute jam session record into an all-star record event, laying the groundwork for a slew of 'supergroups' to come."
Releases
Along with the stereo version, Super Session was released as a 4-channel quadraphonic version in the 1970s. The quadraphonic version was released on SQ matrix encoded vinyl and discrete 8-track cartridge tape. On April 8, 2003, Legacy Records reissued the album on compact disc with four bonus tracks, including both an outtake and a live track with Bloomfield, and two with the horn overdubs mixed out.
Legacy
In their retrospective review, Lindsay Planer of AllMusic comments on the album's original impact:
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Charts
+Chart performance for Super Session
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