Al Kooper – Rare & Well Done (Greatest And Most Obscure Recordings(1964-2001)

Sitting here on the album jacket of this collection we find Al Kooper doing his best shirtless leather pants impression of Jim Morrison, though there the similarities end. As a founding member of blues and jazz laced 60’s bands such as The Blues Project and Blood Sweat & Tears, along with his sensational work with Bob Dylan, as Dylan electrified the world, Kooper was also responsible for the classic chart topping AM radio hit “This Diamond Ring” sung by Gary Lewis & The Playboys back in 1965 … though what most people don’t know, is that he was also a member of The Royal Teens in the early 60’s, who had a silly novelty song called “Short Shorts.” Yet still there’s more, there’s the amazing Super Session that he laid down one hot summer night with Stephen Stills and Mike Bloomfield, perhaps his crowing achievement, and a vinyl record that should be in everyone’s collection.

With so many artists searching under their beds for lost material and outtakes that have been gathering dust for so many generations, it becomes difficult to know just what’s good and what’s bad, though without a doubt, all of that material, including this, is for the collector only, those who want to tie up the loose ends, and dive headlong into chapters that have to date remained unfinished or in complete. That being said, there’s a reason these songs are titled The Greatest and Rarest of Al Kooper, and that’s to draw you in, because his actual greatest songs were committed to vinyl a lifetime ago, with this material being but curiosity when it comes to the legacy of Al Kooper.

Of course there are those who in an attempt to hype and sell the collection will suggest that the material found here is a springboard into the musical times of Al Kooper, using phrases such as ”An indispensable look back at one of rock music’s most prolific artists …” where you instantly zone in on the word ‘indispensable’, when what you should doing is absorbing the entire phrase. Yes, there certainly is some great material found here on this two disc set, Rare and Well Done, yet for the most part it comes across as incomplete and unpolished. That being said, there are staggering highlights, consider his instrumental version of The Beatles’ “Hey Jude”, or check out “Went to See the Gypsy,” and outtake form Bob Dylan’s New Morning album, or the aforementioned “This Diamond Ring,” where Kooper shows Gary Lewis how it’s supposed to have been done. With that in mind, it gets me to wondering why material such as “Albert’s Shuffle,” was included, we already had that delivered back in 1968, or “Flute Thing,” “Season of the Witch” or several others that seemed designed to occupy nothing but space; yet even with all of that in mind, the Well Done disc is very good to say the least.

For all the praise and adulation, the discs clock in at around 37 minutes each, and are selling on the secondary market for about $6 US, so that should certainly tell you something, with that ‘something’ being that this is a fine archival outing to listen to once, perhaps snag a tune of two for you music library, and then to be shelved or resold, as it is what it is, and no more.

Al Kooper is one of those artists where you can walk through his catalog, select the songs you dig from all of his incarnations and create your own timeline of favored tracks, which I promise you, will be much more rewarding over time than this collection. Now, if you’re asking me if if I’m pleased to have heard this adventure, the answer would be, ”Of course I am. Yet in the same breath, I don’t feel the need to commit it to my collection.” So while I’m rating this package well, I’ve not kept it.

Review by Jenell Kesler