White Hot A+++ sound on side two of this 2-pack, with Shootout Winning sound. Great material including The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Sondheim’s Send in the Clowns. Another 2-pack that proves our case – the good sides here are wonderful, the bad sides plainly awful. The engineer for Judith is Phil Ramone, who went on to win the Grammy the following year for Still Crazy After All These Years. (more…)
A classic case of Live and Learn, maybe. Previously we had written:
Superb sonics. Judy has never sounded better. Not a big seller for DCC but it should have been. Those sweet acoustic guitars are hard to beat. No modern recording has sounded like this for over twenty years, so if you’ve forgotten what a real acoustic guitar sounds like, buy this record and get reacquainted with that sound. Tons of breath of life, superb production and mastering so you can clearly hear her hitting those flat notes (!), and some of the best sounding echo ever recorded.
Addendum to the above comments, posted 11/07
I wrote the above review many many years ago. As you may have read countless times on the site by now, it is my opinion that all such dated judgments are suspect. The major REVOLUTIONS in vinyl playback that have occurred over the last dozen years have turned many of these old comments on their heads.
Hot Stamper pressings again and again have revealed magic in the mass-produced copies that is simply nowhere to be found in their audiophile counterparts.
Whether this is true for this particular title I can honestly say I don’t know. We are going to play some copies of the album and will report our findings down the road, so Judy Collins fans, stay tuned.
We had a devil of a time finding clean, quiet, good sounding copies of this album. The mono pressings, which are far more common than the stereo pressings, didn’t sound right to us, and everything produced after the Big Red E label era is a joke, which leaves the Folksinger label pressings from 1963 and the Gold Label pressings from 1965. Both can be good. This LP was by far the quietest we played, which makes it very special indeed. (more…)
A distinguished member of the Better Records Rock and Pop Hall of Fame.
This White Hot Stamper side one was clearly the best we heard in our most recent shootout — the sound is rich and full, yet Judy’s voice comes across as especially clear and breathy. Yes, vintage analog pressings can do it all, with a naturalness that no modern LP or CD can begin to equal, making this side one the obvious choice for those who want to hear just how good Wildflowers gets.
The first three songs on side one alone are worth the price of the album, three of the best Judy ever recorded. Joni Mitchell’s Michael from Mountains is one of the best songs on her debut album; Judy sings it with comparable taste and skill. Since You Asked is Judy’s own composition, her first to be recorded in fact. In this writer’s opinion it’s the best song she ever wrote, “as good as it gets” as we like to say. And of course Leonard Cohen’s Sisters of Mercy is one of his many masterpieces and brilliant in all respects as performed here. (more…)
A distinguished member of the Better Records Rock and Pop Hall of Fame.
This is a Minty Elektra Red Label LP with two AMAZING sounding sides! Typical copies are dull and thin sounding, making Judy Blue Eyes’ beautiful voice sound honky and weak like she has a head cold. This copy is the remedy! (more…)
We were surprised that so few copies had the Tubey Magical qualities that we’ve come to expect from Elektra in 1967. The label was home to two very well-recorded (by none other than Bruce Botnick) bands at the time, The Doors and Love. What happened here? John Haeny, the engineer, worked on Waiting for the Sun, which is an amazing sounding Doors album on the right pressing. Why so few great sounding Wildflowers?
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Michael from Mountains
Since You Asked
Sisters of Mercy
Priests
A Ballata of Francesco Landini
Side Two
Both Sides Now
La Chanson des Vieux Amants (The Love Song of Old Lovers)
Sky Fell
Albatross
Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye
