In 1970, New York rock band Mountain released a memorable track that would help define a genre and go on to inspire one iconic hard rock legend decades later.
“Mississippi Queen” was released in Feb. 1970 and featured on the band’s debut album, Climbing!, also known as Mountain Climbing!. It is regarded as Mountain’s most successful song, reaching No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 shortly after its release.
“Corky Laing had this lyric and he came to my apartment in Manhattan,” guitarist Leslie West told Best Classic Bands of the song’s beginnings. “He says, ‘Look, I have this lyric, ‘’Mississippi Queen.’ He said when he was in Nantucket and playing this bar and the power went out, he was just playing the drums and shouting the words ‘Mississippi Queen, do you know what I mean?'”
The track is known for its powerful instrumentals, including its famous cowbell introduction and the legendary guitar riff which was once voted among Guitar Magazine‘s “50 Heaviest Riffs of All Time,” published in May 1995.
“I started fooling around with the guitar in the apartment and I came up with this riff and it’s three chords,” West explained. “We went really quickly into the studio and Felix told him to count it off and he counted it off with a cowbell. We left it in there.”
In 2005, the late Black Sabbath front man, Ozzy Osbourne, put his own spin on “Mississippi Queen,” releasing a version of the track on his cover compilation album Under Cover. Osbourne’s take of the song features West on guitar and reached No. 10 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Airplay chart.
Fans of the Prince of Darkness have praised his cover, with several stating that they “didn’t know it existed” until playing the audio on YouTube.
“How dare this exist without my knowledge beforehand,” one person commented in 2026. It’s beautiful.”
Related: 1974 Rock Hit, Paying Homage to Wolfman Jack, Still Stands the Test of Time
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