famous bands (or significant portions thereof) who backed up a solo artist or were absorbed into an existing band for a single album: the thread

Yup. Hindu Love Gods was stuff recorded during level checks and downtime during the SH sessions.

I guess in jazz it's more fungible but Norman Connors' 'Dance of Magic' is essentially all of Pharoah Sanders' band at the time minus Pharaoh but including most of the Headhunters

The Fabulous Thunderbirds are the backing band for most of Carlos Santana's Havana Moon.

Just picked up Legacy's old Major Lance 2-discer, and it never before dawned on me that his first few years on OKeh he was doing secret Impressions recordings, with the group providing backing vocals, many of the same session players providing instrumental backing, and Curtis Mayfield writing, playing guitar, and sometimes producing.

Alice Cooper used Lou Reed’s Rock’n’Roll Animal band on Welcome to My Nightmare

Most or all of Pere Ubu (Thomas-Herman-Krauss-Ravenstine-Maimone) were in The Red Crayola for 1979's Soldier-Talk.

(To the extent that both Grubbs and O'Rourke appeared on later Red Krayola releases, I guess you could say that Gastr del Sol was similarly "absorbed"; but it doesn't quite seem like the same thing, as lots of others played on those albums as well.)

Oh shit, I missed expanding a batch of posts in the middle of the thread... I already said the Soldier-Talk thing! Sorry 'bout that

Franz Ferdinand and Sparks absorbed each other for the FFS album

shoutout/xpost grisso-
mj's is the definitive "gypsy woman" imo. all that stuff is great! curtis' behind the board stuff is just as solid as his own records.

*mj=ml=major lance

sry got excited. major lance mention, not an every day thing, y'know.

Curtis did it a lot. He wrote and his band did Aretha Franklin - Spakle, The Staple Singers - Let’s Do it Again, and Gladys Knight and the Pips - Claudine.

Nikki Sudden & the Chamber Strings

Spiritualized back-up Dr. John on a couple of tracks on his Anutha Zone album from 1998

Kraftwerk + Manuel Göttsching on that Die Dominas 10"