Toni Basil

She also starred in the cult film, Rockula with Thomas Dolby. After this, the group was effectively disbanded, though there was a brief resurgence in popularity once the old albums came out on CD. She appeared as a dancer in The Monkees film, Head. Though this reestablished an audience, Columbia Records dropped the group. She also has appeared in movies, such as Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, as a television guest, and as a choreographer for movies such as American Graffiti, The Rose and Legally Blonde. Personnel changes continued at a breakneck pace, culminating in the return of David Calyton-Thomas and the release of a successful comeback album called New City. The video for "Mickey" was released in 1982, and was one of the most popular of the early-MTV music videos. No Sweat and Mirror Image followed and sold miserably.

She is best known for her 1981 song "Mickey". Jim Fielder and Steve Katz quit as the group moved more towards jazz. Her birth name is Antonia Christina Basilotta. The new group released New Blood but this album did not reestablish an audience. Toni Basil (born on September 22, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a musician, video artist and choreographer. Amidst the personnel changes, a Greatest Hits album was released. Dick Halligan was replaced by Larry Willis while George Wadenius joined as a second guitarist.

Fred Lipsius quit and was replaced by Joe Henderson, then Lou Marini Jr. He was replaced by Bob Doyle, then Jerry Fisher. Personality difficulties had split the group in rock and jazz factions with Clayton-Thomas in the middle; he chose to quit to pursue a solo career. Their fourth album sold poorly too and Jerry Hyman was replaced by Dave Bargeron.

Compounding the image problems was a decision to play at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada, a notoriously unhip place in an unhip city. After returning Stateside, the group released Blood, Sweat & Tears 3; it was a critical and popular failure compared to the prior two albums. In retrospect, it is now known that the State Department subtly requested the tour in exchange for more amicability on the issue of Clayton-Thomas' visa. Any voluntary association with the government was extremely unpopular at the time, and the band was ridiculed for it.

This was compounded by a United States Department of State-sponsored tour of Eastern Europe. Because of the presence of horns and the lack of Al Kooper, Blood, Sweat & Tears had trouble holding onto any sort of countercultural hipness at a time when this was very important. The album was much more pop-oriented and soon hit the top of the charts and won Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards. Blood, Sweat & Tears, the group's second, self-titled album, was released in 1969.

Chuck Winfield, Lew Soloff and Jerry Hyman joined soon after to bring the band up to nine total members. Colomby and Katz started recruiting singers, considering the still unknown Stephen Stills and Laura Nyro before settling on David Clayton-Thomas, a Canadian singer. Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss also quit, joining Horace Silver's band and Ambergris, respectively. With the debut album slowly achieving critical mass, Kooper left the group to become a record producer for Columbia.

Colomby and Katz wanted to move Kooper to the organ exclusively and hire a vocalist for the group. While sales slowly picked up, personality conflicts started tearing apart the band. Without any pop-oriented hit singles, though, the album's sales were sluggish. After signing to Columbia Records, the group released one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the 1960s, Child is Father to the Man.

The group debuted at Cafe Au Go Go in New York City in 1967, opening for Moby Grape; the band was a hit with the audience, who liked the innovative fusion of jazz with psychedelic rock and roll. Blood, Sweat & Tears was an American rock and roll group formed in New York City in 1967. Al Kooper, Jim Fielder, Fred Lipsius, Randy Brecker, Jerry Weiss, Dick Halligan, Steve Katz, and Bobby Colomby formed the original incarnation of the band, which was named after a 1963 album by Johnny Cash. Kooper was bandleader, having insisted on that position based on his experiences with Blues Project, his previous band, which had been organized as an egalitarian collective and fallen apart.