Sophisticated orchestration, great voice, love the words . This was the most sophisticated popular music that I heard when I was young.  Joshua Rifkin, who also plays piano rags by Scott Joplin on another record, arranged and conducted this music.  "Both Sides Now" (win and lose are a strange trip in this song) was a hit on the radio for years, competing with "Walk Away Renee" and "Pretty Ballerina" by The Left Banke for best songs with harpsichord in popular music.  I soon bought THE JUDY COLLINS SONGBOOK with 55 songs that included eight of the songs on "Wildflower."    The first musical thing I notice about these songs now is how often I hear a trill or slower alternation between two notes.  The first song, "Michael from Mountains" by Joni Mitchell is in the key of E-flat, with a short introduction that repeats F G F G F G in the treble clef before Judy Collins starts singing those notes.  The second song, "Since You've Asked" by Judy Collins, which seems to be in E-minor, starts with an E and D alternating an octave higher over an E-minor7th chord, dropping through B-minor to a C chord with E D E D E D E in the octave of the voice being much like the introduction to "Michael ..." but with enough G, A sus.4, D9, A-minor7th, and B chords to have as much complexity as sophisticated people expect to hear in their music.  The words on such simple lines, "Take the lilies and the lace from the days of childhood, All the willow winding paths leading up and outward, This is what I give . . . " are as poetic as can be expected when people hardly listen.    "Sisters of Mercy" by Leonard Cohen is brilliantly done with flutes and French horns.  There is certainly more going on than I can describe.  Judy Collins had done "Suzanne" on an earlier album, "In My Life," and the combination of Judy singing Leonard Cohen songs worked so miraculously that "Wildflowers" took it in a very religious direction.  "Priests" has 7 verses, with the third verse:    And who will shoot the arrow  That men will follow through your grace.  And when I'm Lord of memories  And all your armor has turned to lace.    The music seems a lot more complicated than a trill, possibly in B-flat-minor, with the notes between the staffs alternating between B-flat and A-flat three times per measure until the chord changes to C-flat.    If you have never heard "La Chanson des Vieux Amants" by Jacques Brel and Gerard Jouannest, you might not realize how sophisticated French popular songs had been before this album pushed American radio up to international standards.  Big bands had been popular once in the United States, and American music during World War II might have been as popular as anything the rest of the world had to offer, but I lost track of what songs great singers had to choose from after that, when Perry Como and Dean Martin could have used a few more hits.  There are some distinct instrumental voices which make the Brel song on "Wildflowers" interesting, but Brel often worked with Gerard Jouannest to achieve musical complexity.  So I suspect that this version is notable because Judy Collins' French is so beautiful.  The final song in her songbook, "My Father," (on the "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" album) is about "My father always promised us that we would live in France," and she sings like she wants that more than anything else in the world.  Contemplating intense desire is inspiring, but this song for lovers who have grown old expresses it sweetly.  "Oh, mon amour, Mon doux, mon tendre, mon verveilleux amour, ..."    "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" is a beautiful song by Leonard Cohen, soft with sorrow but Hey . .
Output: POS