[.ca] Wild Flowers

Amazon.com essential recording:
She began her career as a folk formalist. Her clear, clean diction and perfect pitch wedded to both age-old folk songs and modern upstarts (Dylan, Eric Andersen) cast her as an immediate authority. With In My Life and Wildflowers she began to shift away from pure folk and into art song. Arranged and conducted by Joshua Rifkin, the disc's orchestration adds a suitable grace to Collins's high seriousness. Joni Mitchell's two compositions are further softened, while Leonard Cohen's three songs sound positively biblical. Toss in a Jacques Brel piece and a 14th-century Italian ballad, and you have the perfect formation of Collins's aesthetic before it congealed in the middle of the road. --Rob O'Connor

Wildflowers:
Correction on your track list #8 should be SKY fell, not SHY.

For me, the best of her albums:
Some of the lyrics are a little laughable now (very hippie thoughtful, self-dramatic) but the whole light, airy quality of the album makes it the best of her work. I like this album very much, but I can't say I'm a huge fan of hers (in other albums, its evident she takes herself too seriously). The ballads are lovely. Her voice has come apart since the mid 1980s, so if you're going to get something, aim for her earlier work. She does not have the range she used to have.

Essential Judy Collins:
Judy Collins is by now one of America's most enduring popular singers. "Wildflowers," along with "In My Life," "Whales and Nightingales" and one or two other albums, represents her particular sensibility in its best light. She started as a strong-voiced folk performer of a distinctly challenging bent. By "Wildflowers" her voice had become higher and lighter in timbre, and her repertory had broadened to include songwriters as diverse as Brel, Mitchell, Cohen and herself. One appreciates after thirty-plus years the quality of the material she chose, and the intricacy and intelligence of the lyrics, even if at times they seem somewhat precious. The beautiful orchestrations by Joshua Rifkin also still give much pleasure. In general the songs on this album do not cover as wide an emotional range as on some of her other discs, tending uniformly toward the gentle and contemplative. On the other hand, they play better to her particular vocal and interpretive strengths. For me, this remains my favorite Collins album.

Classic Collins!:
What can one say about an album that so closely approaches perfection? There are no weak links in these recordings. For those who would purchase this album for the hits included, the rest of the songs will be a revelation. My favorite on here was always "La Chanson Des Vieux Amants". For me, this is 'transportation' music. It can carry me back to the time of its release in an instant. This music is so very, very far from what is done today; the reproduction on CD lends a sonic immediacy that truly wasn't present even on the original LP. I have yet to hear the younger generation of performers approach the honesty, the clarity, or the emotion of this era.

AN Amazing Album By The Rising Judy Collins!:
I remember seeing Judy in concert in the quite informal setting of Avaloch, a wonderful sylvan natural amphitheater that all the folk stars from Collins to Joan Baez to Kris Kristoferson to Tom Rush to James Taylor performed at in Lenox Massachusetts in the summers of 1970. Sadly, it is now the site of a ritzy set of summer condominiums for the New York summertime Berkshires crowd. Yet I can still recall hearing Judy with that magical soaring voice of hers warming up on stage with "Amazing Grace" as we filed onto the grass, and the song so echoed and reverberated over the warm humid airwaves that he older folks at Tanglewood, some six or seven miles way, complained about the noisome interruption. It became an inside joke that Collins, Baez and others would playfully aggravate when performing for the very mellow crowd of counterculture fans. I recall a certain sweet aroma wafting through the air, too, and it wasn't the smell of cotton candy. Of course, it probably goes without saying that I love most of the songs on this album, from the opening cover of "Michael From Mountains" to her own beautifully and lyric "Since You've Asked" to two back to back Leonard Cohen classics, "Sisters Of Mercy and "Priests". Cohen's haunting and evocative lyrics are masterfully interpreted by Collins, an early champion of his amazingly poetic folk songs. Of course, the song propelling the sales of the album was her number one hit song, "Both Sides Now", a song that literally dominated the charts for months. I love her amazing vocal work in "Albatross", and one can almost feel the rush of emotion in the song as she advances through it. Finally, I still think her interpretation of Cohen's "Hey, That's No Way To Say Good-bye" is one of the best songs she ever recorded. This is an early snapshot of a one of the titans of modern American folk music, taken just as she reached the peak of her awesome vocal and collaborative talents. It is one sure to please the most discriminating of well-trained folk ears, and one I am sure you will come to treasure as much as I do. Enjoy.

• Michael from Mountains
• Since You Asked
• Sisters of Mercy
• Priests
• Ballata of Francesco Landini Lasso! Di Donna
• Both Sides Now
• Chanson des Vieux Amants (The Love Song of Old Lovers)
• Sky Fell
• Albatross
• Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye