The Chicago Transit Authority (1969)

The Chicago Transit Authority is the debut studio album by the American rock band Chicago, and the only album released under their original name Chicago Transit Authority. The double album was released on April 28, 1969, and became a sleeper hit, reaching number 17 on the Billboard 200 by 1971. The Chicago Transit Authority spawned several successful singles, including "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?", "Questions 67 and 68" and "Beginnings". The album stayed on the Billboard chart for 171 weeks, beating the previous record for a rock album's longevity of 155 weeks (a record set by the Beatles 'White Album') and has been certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). For this inaugural recording effort, the group was nominated for a Grammy Award for 1969 Best New Artist of the Year. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2025, the album was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry.

History

Chicago was formed in early 1967, first as the Big Thing, then Chicago Transit Authority when producer James William Guercio took them on in 1968. Their trademark was fusing brass and jazz with a soulful rock and roll feel that Guercio thought would prove successful, and lobbied his label to sign the band.

Chicago Transit Authority signed to Columbia Records late in 1968 and recorded their first album in late January 1969 at CBS studios on 52nd Street in New York City. While Guercio had recently produced Blood, Sweat & Tears' second album (which proved to be a huge smash), he did so to raise capital for his band, and to secure the contract with Columbia (which was reluctant at first to have two jazz-rock bands since Blood, Sweat & Tears was already on their roster). By the end of the Chicago Transit Authority sessions, the band had decided they wanted it to be a double album. Skeptical, as the band had no track record, Columbia agreed to the concept only if the group would take a royalty cut.

In addition to the material recorded for the album, "Wake Up Sunshine", "It Better End Soon" (both later released on their second album), "Loneliness is Just a Word" (later released on Chicago III), and an early version of "Mississippi Delta City Blues" (with mostly different music than its eventual versions on Live in Japan and Chicago XI) all date from this era, and were performed as early as 1968. Other early original songs, such as "Dedicated to Girl Number 1" and "Once Upon a Life", were never released.

Musical style, writing, composition

Keyboardist Robert Lamm, guitarist Terry Kath and bassist Peter Cetera shared lead vocals, while James Pankow, Lee Loughnane and Walter Parazaider handled all brass and woodwinds (trombone, trumpet and saxophone, clarinet and flute respectively) and Danny Seraphine played drums. Lamm, Kath and Pankow were the band's main composers at this time. Band members added percussion during sections of a song when they weren't playing their main instrument. For example, on "I'm a Man", Pankow was on cowbell, Parazaider on tambourine, and Loughnane on claves. According to Pankow, the band had included the song in their live set "since the beginning of the group". He added that the rest of the band had a "certain rhythm that we play on our instruments, and we try not to vary from that rhythm".

According to the album's original liner notes, the solo performance of Kath on "Free Form Guitar" was created without the use of any pedals. Kath instead plugged his Fender Stratocaster directly into his studio amplifier and improvised the entire track. The final song on the album, "Liberation" began with a horn part that was later fleshed out with some improvisation. Pankow said that "we stretched it out and put improvisational guitar in the middle and a freak out and an Amen cadence going out in a fast ending. It was just thrown together like that and we've kept it ever since."

The album includes material of a political nature. "The final side ... begins with 'Prologue, August 29, 1968,' a 50-second recording taken from the protests during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The words and sounds of Black militants, demonstrators and police are captured with the most memorable being the chant 'The whole world is watching.' ...These chants lead into the next cut 'Someday.' "

The album is one of two not to have any songwriting contributions from Cetera during his tenure in the band, the other being Chicago V. He started writing songs with the second album, Chicago.