cream performed their first american concerts in new york city in 1967. robert stigwood, the group's manager, booked them for a murray the k package show at the rko manhattan theatre from 25 march to 2 april 1967. when it was finished, stigwood arranged for a recording session with ahmet ertegun at atlantic studios. bruce and brown had a number of new songs in various stages of development and entered the studio on 3 april. initially, ertegun assigned dowd to work with the trio. dowd had worked with many of the biggest jazz and rhythm and blues musicians in the 1950s and 1960s. however, cream was his first exposure to extreme volume levels. the group arrived at atlantic with their concert setup of multiple marshall amplifiers (each 100 watts). dowd was surprised by the amount of equipment accompanying the trio: "they recorded at ear-shattering level... everyone i'd worked with before was using fender deluxes [about 20 watts] or twins [about 80 watts]—six- and seven-piece bands that didn't play as loud as this three piece did."