Before Blood, Sweat & Tears even had a horn section, Bobby Colomby called Fred Lipsius and asked if he wanted to join the new band.

Colomby said he would speak with the others and get back to him. Five minutes later, the phone rang again: “You’re in!”

Lipsius was still far more interested in jazz than in becoming part of a rock group. What caught his attention was the freedom. He could write what he wanted and bring his own musical language into the band. Soon he was sitting beside Al Kooper at a piano in Greenwich Village, listening as Kooper played and writing the horn parts down on music paper. When a half-step clash between two notes caught his ear, he would stop Kooper and make it part of the arrangement.

That is how Lipsius remembers the early Blood, Sweat & Tears. There was no theory behind mixing jazz, rock, blues and folk, and nobody was trying to invent a new genre. “Nothing was musically ‘contrived’ in BS&T,” he says. They came from different places, played together, and it worked.

‘Spinning Wheel’ arrived in much the same spirit. Lipsius first played the song with David Clayton-Thomas at the Café Au Go Go, then wrote the arrangement in a few hours at Colomby’s piano. “The ideas just flowed.” For all the harmonic detail, his main rule was simple: “Don’t get in the way of the singer!!!”

He remembers the notes, but he also remembers the people. Chick Corea telling him, “You had me out there.” Cannonball Adderley greeting him with a hug. Thelonious Monk standing beside him at the piano. David calling shortly before his death to say how much their shared experiences had meant to him.

For all the famous names and the Grammy, Lipsius speaks about his work in remarkably direct terms. Saxophone, piano, arranging and composing are simply “what I do”. Music is something received, made personal and passed along. His own phrase for it is better: “carrying the torch”.

“Nothing was musically ‘contrived’ in BS&T.”

You began playing clarinet at nine before moving to alto and tenor saxophone and also studying piano. When did you first feel that music might become your life? How did you begin finding your own voice among the musicians you admired?

Fred Lipsius: Around age seven, I saw Satchmo (Louis Armstrong) playing a song with his group on TV. I told my mother, “Mom, I want to do that!” I didn’t know the word ‘jazz’ yet, but that kind of music really touched my young heart! My brother, sister and I always saw our dad drawing pictures as a hobby. I was pretty good at art. I could ‘copy’ pictures, but I felt I wasn’t very ‘creative’, so I decided to focus my attention on music around age 14.

Photograph: courtesy of the Fred Lipsius personal archive

At a young age, listening to recordings of Benny Goodman, I began transcribing (writing down on music paper) some of his jazz licks (musical phrases or improvisations). As I entered my teenage years, I listened to many bebop jazz players and transcribed their solos as well. I was also developing my ‘musical ear’. I have a loose-leaf book filled with many of my jazz heroes’ licks. I listened to most of the great players and learned from them, both from their records and from hearing them live at jazz clubs in New York City when I was about 16. Because I’m a ‘creative’ individual, over time I developed my own ‘sound’ (tone and touch) on both sax and piano, always influenced by those who came before me. Bach, Beethoven and Mozart came before Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Monk and all the other jazz greats! It’s like ‘carrying the torch’ for the next person or generation to come. We all pass what we’ve learned on to others…

As an aside, both my arranging and piano playing are mostly self-taught. I’ve also composed about 180 tunes (a few with lyrics) in nine different musical categories (jazz, Latin, pop, fusion, etc.). These were influenced by the various styles of music I listened to and absorbed over the years. Also, although classical music is not my great love, Debussy is my favorite composer. His music is very dreamlike and free. His harmonies went wherever he wanted them to go (not traditional at all). While listening to his famous piece ‘La Mer’ (‘The Sea’), there was a ‘moment’ when the strings or orchestra played some sound or effect, perhaps imitating sunbeams dancing over the ocean. That ‘moment’ of sound or effect in his piece transported me ‘back in time’, perhaps a thousand years! I had never experienced that kind of thing before with anybody’s music. That wasn’t just a ‘listening’ experience; it was also a visual or imaginative thing for me.

Photograph: courtesy of the Fred Lipsius personal archive

After studying at Berklee, you toured with Billy Fellows, played and arranged for Ronn Metcalfe, studied with Larry Wilcox and led a rehearsal big band. What did those early jobs teach you about writing for working musicians? When did you begin to recognise your own style as an arranger?

Something is gained from each new musical experience, whether we’re aware of it or not. I have always (hopefully) written from my heart with true inspiration. A spiritual master once said to do everything with love. I believe that without love, it really doesn’t mean much at all, no matter what you do or say or whatever the situation might be.

While playing alto and arranging for the Ronn Metcalfe Orchestra in Canada, at around age 19, our music was for hundreds of people to dance to.

I believe this is where the ‘commercial’ side of Fred Lipsius as an arranger began to blossom. If the music wasn’t really good, the people wouldn’t get out on the dance floor and dance! I was one of a few arrangers in that orchestra, so I also learned things from hearing others’ arrangements. I also learned about some things that ‘don’t work well’ when writing parts for certain instruments in a band.

Around 1982, when I was writing my first educational book on jazz improvisation for Warner Bros. Music in New York City, a little voice inside my head (it was more like a feeling or nudge) told me NOT to just share a bunch of jazz licks (phrases or riffs) that were ‘theoretically’ correct for players to use in jazz improvisation, but to make sure every lick I shared, and there were over a thousand, had true ‘musical substance’ that could possibly ‘inspire’ someone to create their own jazz licks as well! That’s exactly what happened to me as a youngster, from listening to and transcribing solos by my jazz heroes.

Regarding your second question:

Over the years, I had developed my own style of arranging, probably without even realizing it. Although I spent a lot of time practicing clarinet and saxophone, I spent even more time at the piano learning jazz chords, working out many chord voicings (harmonies), having lots of fun playing and improvising over standard tunes, composing my own jazz tunes and music in other styles, and writing arrangements (also called ‘charts’). As mentioned before, I’m self-taught as an arranger and pianist, so my ideas derive from love and pure inspiration. I really never worried much about whether my arrangement would ‘work’ (sound good) or not!

Bobby Colomby recommended you when Blood, Sweat & Tears was being formed. What do you remember about meeting Al Kooper and first hearing his ideas for the band? Was the full horn section part of the plan from the beginning, or did it develop during rehearsals?

I’m very friendly with Al Kooper. A few years ago, during a phone conversation, I asked Al if it was ‘his’ idea to have a band with horns. He said, “Do you want to know the truth?” In the past, other people had different opinions about where the horn concept for BS&T began!

Bobby Colomby and I had met at a jam session in the Bronx, New York, when he was 13 and I was 14. About ten years later, the BS&T...

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