In 1968, they were two of the rock world’s best-known - and sharpest - second bananas and one guy was soon to become rock Superstar Royalty, and they got into the studio to do something that musicians do: "jam." Not a lot of prep, just pick some songs (especially blues numbers) that everybody knows or can fake, and let fly. (Jazz players, I understand, had been doing that for years.) Al Kooper (ex-Blood Sweat & Tears, Blues Project, Bob Dylan), Mike Bloomfield (ex-Butterfield Blues Band, Electric Flag, Dylan) and Steve Stills (new kid on the block: Buffalo Springfield, pre-Crosby, Stills etc.) collaborated for the semi-legendary, Top 20 on the charts album known as Super Session. The results are simultaneously dated and timeless, often imitated but never duplicated, an album of casual yet strangely substantive music that today would never get released by a major label. This reissued document (w/ four bonus studio 'n' live tunes and boss digital remastering) is valuable chiefly for Bloomfield’s contributions to over half the tunes - in an era dominated by Clapton, Hendrix, Buddy Guy and the three Kings (B.B., Albert and Freddie), these recordings are a welcome reminder that Bloomfield indeed WAS one of the FINEST blues guitarists of that era. He had a feel for improvisation that wasn’t formulaic and a passionate, stinging tone. And it wasn’t just the straight-up blues, either - the energized meditations on "His Holy Modal Majesty" shows that he absorbed the modal energy of early 60s John Coltrane, and did his own thing with it. To be sure, this set has other things to recommend it: the sweet Chicago soul of Curtis Mayfield’s "Man’s Temptation," the druggy, Den of Sin bliss of Stills’ playing on Donovan’s gloriously silly "Season of the Witch," and "Harvey’s Tune," with its oddly prescient and funny preview of Quiet Storm jazz. And, fans of luxuriously rich, blues-drenched Hammond B-3 organ, attention: this platter’s loaded with it. (F.y.i.: Kooper played organ on Dylan’s groundbreaking mid-60s records.) Pardon the un-PC metaphor, but guitar-heads will be in hog heaven with this reissue.