Donovan Gets Some Respect on IMPEX's "the hurdy gurdy man" AAA Reissue

an interesting choice for an audiophile reissue!

Ever since arriving on the U.K. scene, harmonica holder around neck, strumming a guitar, singing a "wind" song (about catching it not looking for answers blowing in it), and being described as "the Scottish Bob Dylan" Donovan has unfairly suffered a respect deficit among some Boomer-aged music fans.

The famous clip from "Don't Look Back" where a half a decade younger Donovan plays and sings in a room full of Dylan fans has long been misinterpreted as Dylan mocking Donovan. True, Donovan sings a mild "ditty" and Dylan sings a driving version of "It's All Over Now Baby Blue", but note that Donovan hands Dylan the guitar and asks him to sing the song.

People debate the meaning of the clip when it's not really worthy of "interpretation". It is what it is: Dylan is the powerful original and rightfully full of himself and Donovan comes across in voice at least as an imitator (but also arguably at the time a more skilled guitarist—at least based on that clip).

Donovan quickly ditched the folkie image (Dylan already had by the time of "Don't Look Back") and moved on to more eclectic, hip musical ideas, incorporating jazz, drone and hard rock. He'd had a number 2 hit in 1966 with "Mellow Yellow" a song referencing an "electrical banana" Donovan later said was about a motorized dildo written and produced before the "you can get high smoking dried bananas" nonsense got started. The song, arranged by John Paul Jones obviously pre Led Zep was written as a throwaway.

A year later Donovan recorded a jazzy live album featuring flutist Harold McNair and on some tracks a string section recorded at The Anaheim Convention Center that wasn't released until June, 1968. It's a gem once you get past the corny intro by Donovan's father and it's worth picking up a copy. Meanwhile, Epic also released in 1967 the double "flower power" album Gift From a Flower to a Garden one of which was a children's record, though not a juvenile one. Busy guy.

This eclectic album was released four months later in October of 1968 with Mickie Most back after having left opposed to a children's record. Of course the title tune is an epic, dark, mysterious hard rocker possibly influenced by the infamous trip to India (with Beatles, Mike Love and Mia Farrow) that's retained it's mysterious power more than 50 years later, aided by Jimmy Page's incendiary guitar crunch—not that any of us at the time knew it was Page or knew of Page or JPJ. * (Reader Chris Cassells corrects the record):

• There has long been confusion about who played guitar on "Hurdy Gurdy Man". Donovan himself has said it was Jimmy Page, but ... Jimmy Page, 2000: "I know it's rumored that I played on that. But I didn't."

John Paul Jones, 2002: "No it wasn't Jimmy. It was me, Alan Parker on guitar, and Clem Cattini on drums. Donovan played acoustic guitar. I booked the session."

John Paul Jones, 2005: "I would like to confirm that the musicians on the record were as follows: Donovan, Acoustic Guitar; John Paul Jones, Arrangement/Musical Director and Bass Guitar; Alan Parker, Lead (electric) Guitar; Clem Cattini, Drums. No other musicians were involved in this session."

The rest of the album is an odd but attractive stylistic mix of dark drone, flute drench, nostalgic British music hall ("As I Recall" and "Hi, It's Been A Long Time"), jazz and calypso—among others. if there's a fault to all of this it's that Donovan's eclecticism flits from one style to another rather than remaining in place to further explore a few of them or one as Ray Davies did with The Village Green Preservation Society.

Some of it like the string and woodwind arranged "Jennifer Juniper" can sound like precious drawing room drama, but Donovan keeps moving so "The River Song" sounds like folk/psych produced by his Scottish brethren Mike Heron and Robin Williamson on the Incredible String Band's album The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion. Then to a drone filled "Tangiers" followed by the McCartney-ish "A Sunny Day", featuring a recorder that's so immediately recorded it sounds like its in the room—far more so on this superb sounding reissue than on the original Epic pressing that always sounded very fine, though undistinguished... until this.

The original sounds very good, though a bit brittle in the upper mids and it's typically bass shy as many records of that era were compared to this reissue. The reissue's midband is smoother yet more detailed. Compare the original and reissue bass line on "The Sun is a Very Magic Fellow" and that's the difference you'll hear throughout: bass is more robust, and more natural on the reissue. It was clearly somewhat attenuated on the original.

Chris Bellman has extracts every bit of transient clarity, transparency and three-dimensionality that's on the tape (which, unless Sony changed its tune was a copy not the original) but never before so cleanly and remarkably expressed. The more familiar you are with this easily dismissed as a trifle record, the more likely you are to be surprised and amazed by what you hear first play and every subsequent one. I replayed this reissue more times over the past week or so, than I've probably played it in decades.

Add Charles L. Granata's notes, a nice tip-on jacket (though I think the color is "off") and you have a short, but very sweet sounding reissue of one of Donovan's more eclectic offerings.

POST POST NEWS: A readers asked in the comments and I got a few emails about it, how IMPEX got a master tape out of Sony and IMPEX's Bob Donnelly responded and gave permission to post it here, which I'm happy to do because it contains some interesting information:

Hi Michael the tape is a one-to-one transfer from the American master. I'm pretty sure that information is in all of our literature but I'll double check. Sony no longer provides Master tapes to anyone. Vendors have two choices, either except a one-to-one tape done by Sony studios or I think mobile Fidelity brings their digital recorder to Sony and makes their copy, don't know for sure. the hurdy gurdy man was an original to the US only and was assembled from production/session masters provided from England. I assume those production masters were sent back to England in the '60s. The unassembled tapes were offered to us by Donovan himself but they were delaying getting that accomplished and our contract forced us to move ahead. Let me know if you have any more questions on it, thanks, Bob.

However, for me, the best most fun version of "the hurdy gurdy man" (the song) is by Butthole Surfers released 1990.