Donovan Leitch’s masterwork album ‘Sunshine Superman’ was recorded aged 19, and is regarded to have influenced ‘Sgt. Pepper’, he later went with The Beatles to India and George Harrison is quoted in The Beatles Anthology saying “Donovan is all over the white album”.
Before creating the first psychedelic album, Donovan entered the music scene as a folk singer, compared with Dylan, both great poets of the highest order.
The Scottish artist released debut album ‘What’s Bin Did and What’s Bin Hid’ in 1965, emerging from the folk scene and quickly gained fame from TV appearances, the single ‘Catch The Wind’ reaching number 4. The acoustic style of gentle folk music clearly had been influenced by Guthrie but contained a lot of originality. This might not be an album associated with ‘troubadour’ Donovan, but its a very impressive debut.
‘Fairy Tale’ 1965 was Donovan’s Classical/Jazz fusion album, coming months after his debut and showing more strength in his writing style. Folk is still abundant and lyrics becoming more political leading to more ‘Dylan’ comparisons, this album (with lead single ‘Colours’) saw the end of early Donovan.
The 3rd ‘Sunshine Superman’ causes some confusion. Here in the UK, Pye and Epic records had some dispute blah blah blah. In the USA they had two albums – ‘Sunshine Superman’ and ‘Mellow Yellow’, but because of the dispute we ended up getting a record comprising of the two USA albums, creating a more gifted product which Donovan had started to write in 1965. The release in 67 came at the height of psychedelic music and so this magical, mesmerising album became a favourite and those Dylan comparisons ended.
1968’s ‘A Gift From a Flower to a Garden’ was a double release, record 1 being ‘Wear Your Love Like Heaven’ and record 2 ‘For Little Ones’ and is therefore regarded as one of the first box sets in rock music. It’s a Pye/Epic thing why this happened. Donovan produced most of the material himself, the first record of electric pop and the second album acoustic ‘children’s music’ claiming the first record for the present generation and the second for the dawning generation.
Recommendations – I have opted for ‘Troubador : The Definitive Collection, 1964-1976’ over market leading ‘Retrospective’ as I feel it’s a more complete album. Don’t get me wrong, both are great albums, retrospective actually has more songs but it does not have ‘Celia of the Seas’ or ‘Riki Tiki Tavi’ on it and I just can’t move forward from that.
I’ve also included the masterpiece ‘Sunshine Superman’ for vinyl lovers. I think that’s Donovan done.