2007
Les Paul Award:
Al Kooper
Named for one of the industry's most revered personalities, the Les Paul Award was created in 1991 to honor individuals or institutions that have set the highest standards of excellence in the creative application of recording technology.
 In
2008 he will celebrate his 50th year in
the music business; Al Kooper has certainly
seen it all, and he’s one of a handful
of greats who has done it all, too. Growing
up in Queens, New York, he was a self-taught
piano player and guitarist who loved blues,
gospel and R&B music. Like so many kids
in the late ’50s, he put in untold
hours on street corners harmonizing with
friends in makeshift doo-wop groups, but
unlike most of his buddies, Al went pro:
By the time he was 14 he had joined the
Royal Teens (of “Shorts Shorts”
fame) as a guitarist, and there was no turning
back from there. He slowly became a session
guitarist—producers “would hire
me to get that ‘dumb kid sound,’”
he joked. And the precocious and prodigiously
talented Kooper also got into songwriting
at an early age, scoring hits in the early
60s with “I Must be Seeing Things”
for Gene “Town Without Pity”
Pitney, and “This Diamond Ring,”
a song he co-wrote for The Drifters, who
passed on it, and then became a Number One
smash for Gary Lewis & the Playboys.
But the trajectory of Al Kooper’s
career was about to change.
In the spring of 1965, a producer he’d
befriended, Tom Wilson, invited Al to come
down to the studio and check out a session
with Bob Dylan, who was cutting his ground-breaking
Highway 61 Revisited album. Kooper
bluffed his way onto the session and ended
up laying down the immortal organ line for
Dylan’s epic “Like a Rolling
Stone.” This began a long association
with both Dylan and guitarist Mike Bloomfield,
who was also on the session, and it led
to Kooper becoming one of the most in-demand
session players in rock.
Al was a member of
the highly influential band The Blues Project,
but by 1967 had moved on to form a group
that encompassed his progressive vision
of mixing, rock, jazz and blues, Blood Sweat
& Tears. Their landmark debut, Child
Is Father to the Man, showed the true
breadth of his talent, and though he stayed
in the band for just that one album, it
solidified his standing as one of popular
music’s most exciting and versatile
figures. His independent studio work continued
unabated, too, as he dashed between sessions
by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, the Stones,
The Who, Taj Mahal, B.B. King and scads
of others, and somehow also managed to cut
a couple of classic LPs with Bloomfield
including the classic top ten Super Session,
the first rock jam album. Eight solo albums
followed from the late ‘60’s
to the mid’70’s.
With his great ears,
unbeatable connections and tremendous enthusiasm
for all types of music, it was natural for
Al to move into A&R and production.
In the late ’60s, he talked Columbia
Records out of dropping The Zombies just
in time for their timeless smash “Time
Of The Season,” and in the early ’70s
discovered the great Southern rock band
Lynyrd Skynyrd, producing their first three
albums for his own MCA imprint, Sounds of
the South, including the hits "Free
Bird" and "Sweet Home Alabama."
He also produced the likes of Joe Ely, The
Tubes' first album, B.B. King, Nils Lofgren
and Lenny White, all the while keeping a
busy schedule as a session ace. As West
Coast A&R director for PolyGram, he
helped sign Richard Thompson, at the same
time as baby-sitting Bon Jovi and Tears
For Fears.
He branched out into
scoring TV series when he was hired to score
and pick records for Michael Mann’s
acclaimed Crime Story. By the late
’80s, he says he considered himself
“semi-retired,” but that didn’t
stop him from touring with Joe Walsh, acting
as musical director for a Ray Charles 50th-anniversary
TV special and writing a witty and insightful
autobiography, Backstage
Passes And Backstabbing Bastards.
The last decade has
found the Indefatigable One bouncing from
one interesting gig to another, whether
it’s joining Dylan for a concert or
two; playing organ during a gospel set at
Woodstock II; co-producing a Harry Nilsson
tribute album; teaching at the Berklee School
of Music; writing articles and lecturing;
and shepherding a couple of solo albums—the
exceptional anthology Rare + Well Done
and 2005’s critically-acclaimed Black
Coffee.
An incredibly gifted
and soulful musician, a compelling raconteur
and one of the music industry’s true
“good guys,” Al Kooper is a
deserving recipient for this year’s
TEC Les Paul Award.
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2007
Al Kooper
Past recipients:
2006
Steve Miller
2005 David Byrne
2004
Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis
2003 Bruce
Springsteen
2002 Robbie
Robertson
2001 Steely Dan
2000 Paul McCartney
1999 Sting
1998 Neil Young
1997 Stevie Wonder
1996 Brian Wilson
1995 Alan Parsons
1994 Herbie Hancock
1993 Peter Gabriel
1992 Bob Clearmountain
1991 Bob Ludwig
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