Donovan – A Gift From A Flower To A Garden (1968) 24-bit/96kHz Vinyl Rip

Rock music’s first two-LP box set, A Gift from a Flower to a Garden overcomes its original shortcomings and stands out as a prime artefact of the flower-power era that produced it. The music still seems a bit fey, and overall more spacey than the average Moody Blues album of this era, but the sheer range of subjects and influences make this a surprisingly rewarding work. Essentially two albums recorded simultaneously in the summer of 1967, the electric tracks include Jack Bruce among the session players. The acoustic tracks represent an attempt by Donovan to get back to his old sound and depart from the heavily electric singles (“Sunshine Superman,” etc.) and albums he’d been doing — it is folkier and bluesier (in an English folk sense) than much of his recent work. Bruce Eder, Allmusic.

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Track listing:

Phonograph Record/ The First
Selections
01. Wear Your Love Like Heaven
02. Mad John’s Escape
03. Skip-a-long Sam
04. Sun
05. There was a Time

06. Oh Gosh
07. Little Boy in Corduroy
08. Under the Greenwood Tree
09. The Land of Doesn’t Have to Be
10. Someone’s Singing

Phonograph Record/ The Second
Selections
11. Song of the Naturalist’s Wife
12. The Enchanted Gypsy
13. Voyage into the Golden Screen
14. Isle of Islay
15. The Mandolin Man and his Secret
16. Lay of the Last Tinker

17. The Tinker and the Crab
18. Widow with Shawl (a portrait)
19. The Lullaby of Spring
20. The Magpie
21. Starfish-on-the-Toast
22. Epistle to Derroll

Personnel:

Donovan – vocals, guitar, whistling
Cliff Barton – electric bass
Mike O’Neil – organ, piano, harpsichord
Kieth (sic) Webb – drums
Candy John Carr – conga, bongos
Harold McNair – flute
Mike Carr – vibraphone
Eric Leese – electric guitar
Jack Bruce – electric bass on ‘Someone’s Singing’
Tony Carr – drums, bells, conga, Turkish & finger cymbals
Ken Baldock – string bass
Recorded at CBS Studios, London, engineer Michael Ross Trevor
Produced by Mickie Most