Donovan - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1965-1966

I recently posted about my overall BBC plans. Next up on my list for that is to post the BBC sessions of Donovan. I have five volumes planned from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, including one complete show. Here's the first one.

When Donovan first emerged on the music scene in Britain, he was in a folkie mode that was both unique yet influenced by Bob Dylan. That's what he is here, playing all his songs in solo acoustic mode. He does two Dylan songs here, "Who Killed Davey Moore," and "Daddy, You've Been on My Mind" (usually known as Mama, You've Been on My Mind").

I previously posted an album of his stray tracks from around 1965. Four of the exact same performances are both on here and there: the two Dylan songs I just mentioned, plus "Working on the Railroad" and "Runnin' from Home." Normally, I don't like repeats like that, but I figured I should have all the BBC performances on these BBC sessions albums.

Every single song here is officially unreleased. Also, for this album and indeed the whole series of albums, I've also collected performances he did on other TV and radio shows, not just the BBC. In this case, the first 13 songs are from the BBC, and the last six are not. For those last six, two are from a film called "The Big T. N. T. Show," one is from a US TV show, and the last three are from a Swedish TV show.

The songs are sorted chronologically, and that non-BBC stretch starts in late 1965 and continues into 1966. I'm sure there would have been more BBC performances to chose from, except that Donovan ran into some serious contract disputes with his record company. This delayed his next album "Sunshine Superman," as well as singles, for a few months in the US. But in Britain it was worse, and he couldn't put out any new music for all over 1966. Thus there were no BBC sessions there either. So these other performances try to make up for some of that gap.

For the 13 songs actually done at the BBC, there was the usual problem of BBC DJs talking over the music sometimes. It happened for six of the 13 songs (plus one of the bonus tracks). But I used the X-Minus audio editing program and wiped out the talking while keeping the underlying music.

There are two bonus tracks, "Catch the Wind" and "Colours." There's absolutely nothing wrong with them in terms of sound quality. The only reason they're just bonus tracks is because they're different BBC versions of songs already on the album. I believe I picked the better versions for the main album. The versions of "Colours" I picked has an extra verse at the end, compared to the bonus track version.

This album is 48 minutes long, not counting the bonus tracks.

01 San Francisco Bay Blues (Donovan)
02 Catch the Wind (Donovan)
03 Who Killed Davey Moore [Edit] (Donovan)
04 Colours (Donovan)
05 To Sing for You [Edit] (Donovan)
06 Working on the Railroad [Edit] (Donovan)
07 Candy Man (Donovan)
08 Runnin' from Home [Edit] (Donovan)
09 Universal Soldier (Donovan)
10 Little Tin Soldier [Edit] (Donovan)
11 Turquoise (Donovan)
12 Bert's Blues [Edit] (Donovan)
13 Daddy, You've Been on My Mind (Donovan)
14 Summer Day Reflection Songs (Donovan)
15 Sweet Joy (Donovan)
16 Three King Fishers (Donovan)
17 Celeste (Donovan)
18 Guinevere (Donovan)
19 Sunny Goodge Street (Donovan)

Catch the Wind [Edit] (Donovan)
Colours (Donovan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15110521/Donovn_1965-1966_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo shows Donovan on the "Ready Steady Go" BBC TV show in early 1965. It could be when he performed the first song here, "San Francisco Bay Blues," which was also done on that TV show in early 1965, but I'm not sure.