Apples and oranges.
They did, however, share a producer in
James William Guercio (who worked on recording BS&T and CTA simultaneously.)
Horn bands never completely fell out of favor in the midwest, Guercio produced hit records by The Buckinghams in '67.
Both recorded for Columbia, which in those years had the most money and by far the biggest publicity organization.
So, the two bands got lumped together.
BS&T played mostly covers, where Chicago was all originals.
(Except for Winwood's "I'm A Man" on CTA. Co-incidentally, Traffic's "Smiling Phases" was on BS&T.)
BS&T started out as an Al Kooper vanity super-group project using New York studio cats.
After one record, they kicked out their founder and recruited Canadian David Clayton-Thomas to sing.
I happened to visit the Bay area in August '68 and saw a poster for BS&T at the Fillmore West.
Age 14, I talked my cousin into taking me to see (I thought) my hero (from the Super Session record) Al Kooper with his band.
They were the warm-up for Eric Burdon & The New Animals, and to my shock and horror, when they took the stage, no Al.
(In those pre-internet days, music news traveled slowly.)
Clayton-Thomas turned me off a bit in those shaggy hippie days.
He had greasy slicked-back hair and a bit of a paunch, looked
more like a truck driver than my image of a rock star.
His vocal style and stage presence had a rather Vegas
lounge vibe that was out of sync with the time and place.
I remember some of the musicians
reading off music stands, never seen at a rock concert.
They played most of the material from the self-titled second album. (Not yet released.)
I was impressed with their chops, they had some good tunes, Clayton-Thomas' voice grew on me after I got used to it.
But after an hour, I was more than ready for Burdon's hippie phase material and a good psychedelic light show.
Their album went on to go quad platinum and win a Grammy, and got huge airplay on commercial AM radio.
I was lucky enough to see them as unknowns.
***
The double Chicago Transit Authority album didn't come out until six months or so later, in the summer of '69. (Think Woodstock)
As mentioned in the posts above, they had a harder sound, three accomplished vocalists, one of whom was also a killer guitarist.
Chicago came up together as a midwest covers "show band" (the real version of the jokey Blues Brothers)
who could play soul music and hard rock with equal skill and enthusiasm.
(The horn players simply picked up percussion instruments and turned Terry Kath loose. "I'm A Man", whew!)
I've always thought Peter
Cetera didn't get enough credit for his killer bass guitar work on those early records, with Seraphine on drums they were a kick-ass rhythm section.
The first record didn't have AM friendly hit singles, but was more suited to the "underground" FM format.
As noted above (and in the recent documentary), they had an "anti-establishment" political vibe in tune with the times.
Most apparent on the anti-war material on CTA, but also "When All The Laughter Dies in Sorrow" on III and "Dialog" on V.
I was struck looking through the Quadio album covers by the recurrent theme of being chased by the cops.
I saw Chicago in concert in '71, after III came out.
I remember them as the more impressive live act of the two.
A couple of other great horn bands I recall from those days:
- Sons of Champlin - from the Bay Area. Bill Champlin went on to play in Chicago for, like, 30 years.
- Chase - Bill Chase died in 1974 in a small plane crash, not far from where Buddy Holly went down
Below are my program from the 1971 Chicago tour (with Quadio covers) and my flyer for the BS&T Fillmore West show.
Great memories.