Personnel: John Phillips (guitars); Bill Cleary, Denny Doherty, Michelle Phillips, Terry Melcher, Cass Elliot (vocals); Eric Hord, David T. Walker, Donald Peake, Larry Carlton, Louie Shelton, William A. Richardson (guitars); Orville 'Red' Rhodes (pedal steel guitar); Peter Ivers (harmonica); Jim Horn, Wilton Felder, Bobby Keys (saxophone); Kathleen Vantrease, Joe Sample, Van Dyke Parks (keyboards); James Hughart, Tony Newton, Joe Osborn (bass guitar); Ed Greene, Hal Blaine, Jim Gordon (drums); Alan Estes, Gary Coleman, Bobbye Hall (percussion).

After the dissolution of the Mamas and the Papas, the equally dissolute John Philips released one very odd country-rock solo album, 1970's THE WOLFKING OF L.A., reissued in 2006 by Varese Sarabande. Although Philips continued recording sporadically between 1971 and 1973, while engineering a failed reunion of his former band and producing tracks for the soundtrack of BREWSTER MCCLOUD, no album emerged. JACK OF DIAMONDS is Varese Sarabande's 18-track reconstruction of unreleased songs salvaged from that period. Recorded mostly in New York with musicians including Van Dyke Parks and members of the jazz-fusion studio crew the Crusaders, these songs are a fine example of the grittier end of 1970s soft rock, closer in sound and attitude to Warren Zevon, Tom Waits, and Steely Dan than the sunshine pop that made Philips's name. Highlights include two versions of "Me and My Uncle," a song Philips wrote for the Grateful Dead.

Although John Phillips record releases virtually ground to a halt after his 1970 solo debut album, he did continue recording intermittently in the '70s. The 13 tracks forming the core of Jack of Diamonds are an approximation of how a second Phillips solo LP might have sounded, pieced together from various sessions in 1972 and 1973. Phillips made a great contribution to mid-'60s pop/rock as chief songwriter for the Mamas & the Papas, and to be harsh, this batch of tunes is not only weak in comparison, but also finds him losing his central threads of stylistic identity. Maybe it has something to do with the confusion of finding his music increasingly out of step with the times, but much of this is pretty lethargic, nearly faceless, early-'70s singer/songwriter fodder. Sometimes inspired by the time he was spending in New York, the songs reflect a vague sense of dislocation, discontent, and sketches of slightly odd characters and milieus without connecting deeply. As a solo singer, he seems inadequate to the task of fully expressing the complexities he apparently wants to probe. The instrumentation is a too-tame form of laid-back jazzy early-'70s rock, despite (or because) of the presence of pros like Jim W. Gordon, Van Dyke Parks, and some of the Crusaders. "Jack of Diamonds," aka "Me and My Uncle," is a real good song, but you won't know it from the lounge-ish reading he gives it here, and it's terribly inferior to the versions cut by Dino Valenti, Judy Collins, and Mike Wilhelm. The five cuts designated as bonus tracks -- not intended for a second Phillips album, but recorded between 1970 and 1973 -- are both different in mood and a little more satisfying, including the two songs he contributed to Robert Altman's eccentric movie Brewster McCloud; a couple Mamas & the Papas recordings that didn't make their ill-fated final album, "People Like Us"; and another version of "Me and My Uncle." ~ Richie Unterberger

Uncut (p.115) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he extravagant ambition and bountiful imagination triumph over the chemical savages."

No Depression (p.89) - "[A]s a stand-alone confluence of early '70s styles in the hands of a talented songwriter, it's a great discovery."