Some songs are locked definitively into one specific era. Given the psychedelic nature of the vocals and instrumentation on "Green Tambourine," it doesn't surprise me that The Lemon Pipers topped the charts with it in early 1968. It's unlikely that it would have been a hit at any other time.
It did surprise me to learn there's an instrumental cover of it from that same year. Oliver Nelson and Steve Allen pulled off an unusual arrangement that combines Baroque-sounding harpsichord with saxophone and strings. It was puzzling, at first, to hear Classical, jazz, and easy listening elements blend this way, but after a couple of listens, I realized it worked--and was appropriate to the song's throwback-but-contemporary-for-its-time nature.
