In addition to original music, the group is known for arrangements of popular songs by Laura Nyro, James Taylor, Carole King, the Band, the Rolling Stones, Billie Holiday and many others.

[citation needed] Kooper was the initial singer and musical director, having insisted on that position based on his work with the Blues Project, his previous band with Katz.

A few more shows were played before Lipsius recruited horn players Dick Halligan, Randy Brecker, and Jerry Weiss.

[citation needed] After signing to Columbia Records, the group released Child Is Father to the Man which reached number 47 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart in the United States.

Colomby and Katz looked for a new vocalist and considered Alex Chilton,[6] Stephen Stills, and Laura Nyro, before deciding on David Clayton-Thomas, a Canadian from Toronto.

It included Nyro's "And When I Die", "You've Made Me So Very Happy" by Berry Gordy and Brenda Holloway, and Clayton-Thomas' "Spinning Wheel".

[3] Voluntary association with the U.S. government was highly unpopular with "underground" rock fans at the time, some of whom engaged in radical politics.

[3] It is now known that the State Department subtly pressured the group into the tour in exchange for a U.S. residency permit to Clayton-Thomas,[3] who had a criminal record in Canada, and had been deported from the U.S. after overstaying his visa.

The album was another success,[3] spawning hit singles with Carole King's "Hi-De-Ho" and another Clayton-Thomas composition, "Lucretia MacEvil".

[3] Compounding the image problem was a decision to play a lucrative engagement at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip.

This was unpopular with young underground rock fans who identified Las Vegas entertainers with the music of their parents' generation.

In late 1970, the band produced soundtrack music for the film comedy The Owl and the Pussycat , which starred Barbra Streisand and George Segal.

[3] After a final show at Anaheim Convention Center on December 31, 1971, Clayton-Thomas left in early January 1972 to pursue a solo career.

The album reached the top 40 on the Billboard chart and spawned a hit single "So Long Dixie", which peaked at number 44.

Both Madrid and Soloff left in late 1973, making way for new horn player/arranger Tony Klatka on the next release, Mirror Image (July 1974), which also saw the addition of vocalist/saxophonist Jerry LaCroix (formerly of Edgar Winter's White Trash), sax player Bill Tillman, bassist Ron McClure and the exodus of original bass player Jim Fielder.

This album shows the influences of Philly Soul, Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters, and Chick Corea's group Return to Forever.

Jerry LaCroix left BS&T to join Rare Earth after playing a final show at Wollman Rink in New York's Central Park on July 27, 1974.

The city government was concerned that a "rock band" would attract a rowdy audience; it threatened to revoke the concert permit if BS&T was not removed from the program.

[9] In July 1976 More Than Ever, produced by Bob James and featuring guest vocals by Patti Austin and appearances by a host of NYC session players, including pianist Richard Tee, guitarists Eric Gale and Hugh McCracken, trumpeter Jon Faddis and Eric Weissberg (banjo, dobro), was released but sold disappointingly.

Stern, Trifan, McCurdy, Buchtel and Tillman all departed to be succeeded respectively by Randy Bernsen, Neil Stubenhaus, Michael Lawrence and Gregory Herbert.

In 1979, with the encouragement of longtime BS&T manager Fred Heller, who had numerous requests for the band to play more shows, Clayton-Thomas decided to continue Blood, Sweat & Tears with an entirely new lineup that consisted of himself and other Canadian musicians (Kenny Marco – guitar, David Piltch – bass, Joe Sealy – keyboards, Bruce Cassidy – trumpet, flugelhorn, Earl Seymour – sax, flute, Steve Kennedy – sax, flute and Sally Chappis – drums, with Harvey Kogan soon replacing Kennedy and Jack Scarangella succeeding Chappis).

The group signed to Avenue Records subsidiary label LAX (MCA Records), with a slightly altered lineup of: David Clayton-Thomas (vocals, guitar), Robert Piltch (guitar), David Piltch (bass), Richard Martinez (keyboards), Bruce Cassidy (trumpet, flugelhorn), Earl Seymour (sax, flute), Vernon Dorge (sax, flute) and a returning Bobby Economou on drums, and with producer and arranger Jerry Goldstein, recorded the album Nuclear Blues (March 1980).

The album was yet another attempt to reinvent the group, showcasing the band in a funk sound environment that recalled such acts as Tower of Power and LAX labelmates War (with whom BS&T did several shows in 1980).

In 1998, to celebrate thirty years after he first joined the group, David Clayton-Thomas began work on a solo CD titled Bloodlines that featured a dozen former members of Blood, Sweat & Tears, (Tony Klatka, Fred Lipsius, Lew Soloff, Dave Bargeron, Randy Brecker and others) performing on the album and providing arrangements to some of the songs.

On March 12 and 13, 1993, Al Kooper organized two shows at the Bottom Line in NYC that were advertised as "A Silver Anniversary Celebration of the Classic Album The Child Is Father to the Man", which featured Kooper, Randy Brecker, Jim Fielder, Steve Katz and Fred Lipsius playing together for the first time in 25 years, accompanied by Anton Fig, Tom Malone, Lew Soloff, John Simon and Jimmy Vivino, as well as a two-woman chorus and string section.

The following year, in early February 1994, Kooper returned to the Bottom Line for his 50th birthday celebration, in which he played with members of his new band plus the Blues Project & BS&T.

From 2013 until 2018, Blood Sweat and Tears was fronted by Bo Bice, who was the runner-up against Carrie Underwood in the fourth season of American Idol.

In 2018 the group decided to replace Bice with former Tower of Power singer Tom Bowes, who had previously done a brief stint with BS&T back in July through November 2012.