- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Climbing! was released in March 1970 and includes a #21 hit song “Mississippi Queen” that was also featured in the cult classic film Vanishing Point (1971).
Mountain – Climbing! (1970): Mountain’s debut album Climbing! is one of my favorite hard rock albums. The band’s guitarist and bandleader Leslie West was previously a member of the Long Island garage rock/R&B band the Vagrants; they released a cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect” that was selling reasonably well until Aretha Franklin’s definitive version of “Respect” propelled them from the charts. Fresh from his success of producing and collaborating with Cream beginning with their second album Disraeli Gears (1967), Felix Pappalardi expressed interest in producing Leslie West’s music; he had previously produced the Vagrants’ songs also. Leslie West released a solo album in mid-1969 called Mountain that many people think is an album by the band Mountain.
Although the band is actually named after this solo album, some of the bandmembers in the band Mountain performed on the album Mountain. (To make it even more confusing, Leslie West had also formed a band in early 1969 called Leslie West Mountain). Mountain was assembled immediately after the release of Mountain, comprising Leslie West (guitar and vocals), Felix Pappalardi (bass and vocals), Steve Knight (keyboards), and N. D. Smart (drums). Their third concert as a working band was at Woodstock Music and Art Fair, where they performed, among other songs, “Theme for an Imaginary Western” – written by former Cream bandmember Jack Bruce and Pete Brown – at almost the same moment that Jack Bruce’s debut solo album Songs for a Tailor was released, which featured his original version of the song. However, Mountain was featured neither on the Woodstock film nor the original Woodstock triple-album soundtrack; while two songs by Mountain were included on the double-album Woodstock Two (1971), the songs were not actually recorded at Woodstock according to Wikipedia. Featuring a new drummer Corky Laing in the Mountain line-up, Climbing! was released in March 1970 and includes a #21 hit song “Mississippi Queen” that was also featured in the cult classic film Vanishing Point (1971). Felix Pappalardi’s wife Gail Collins Pappalardi co-wrote six songs on the album and contributed artwork for the cover on Climbing! and their next two albums. The album also includes “Theme for an Imaginary Western” and a reflection on Woodstock called “For Yasgur’s Farm” (Max Yasgur owned the farm where the festival took place).