I remember as a kid learning the hard way about albums disguised as hits collections that were, in fact, faithful renderings by some shadow studio group. Soundalike LPs, if you will. Case in point: 18 Golden Hits of 1970. The singers and musicians who did their best to mimic the year’s big hits are not named here (Discogs attributes these eighteen performances to “The Echoes“). Not surprisingly, the end result is extremely unsatisfying.
With Sounds of the Woodstock Age, however, Pickwick is in no way trying to deceive music lovers into believing these recordings are the original songs, original artists. To Pickwick’s credit, on the front cover below the names of the 18 “heavy hits” it says, “played and sung by” followed by the name of the artist – TRIBES – in boldface upper case letters.
Tribes do a surprisingly credible version of John Phillips’ #32 hit from his debut solo album — and in spite of the low-budget crowd sounds added by Pickwick to simulate Woodstock (listen, too, for the small flub by the drummer in the intro before the vocal):
[Pssst: Click on the triangle above to hear ”Mississippi” simulated live by Tribes]
Just for comparison –
45Cat reports that “Mississippi” stayed on the Swedish pop charts for fifteen weeks, reaching as high as #3, while in Australia, the John Phillips single broke Top 40 throughout the continent, even peaking at #1 in Brisbane.
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John Phillips All-Stars
Check out the musician credits for the original 1970 LP, John Phillips (also known as John, The Wolf King of L.A.):
John Phillips – vocals, guitar, harmonica
Buddy Emmons – pedal steel
Red Rhodes – steel guitar
James Burton – guitar, dobro
Dr. Eric Hord – guitar
David Cohen – guitar
Gordon Terry – fiddle, violin
Darlene Love – vocals
Fanita James – vocals
Jean King – vocals
Joe Osborn – bass
Hal Blaine – drums
Larry Knechtel – keyboards
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LINK to Musical Bloopers on Zero to 180
