Hurdy Gurdy Man is a song by the Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan. It was written during a trip to India, was recorded in early 1968, and was released in May 1968 as a single. It gave its name to the album The Hurdy Gurdy Man, which was released in October of that year in the U.S. Hurdy Gurdy Man was undoubtedly Donovans hardest-rocking hit, though mystical folk-rock was still at the core of this 1968 number five hit single. Certainly it started in as gentle a frame of mind as the typical Donovan song, with a hypnotic wordless vocal hum which reached back to the very roots of Celtic folk music, sounding like a prayer from a devotional ritual. The hum was then joined by a gentle acoustic guitar strum, and when Donovan began singing lyrics, set to one of his more beguiling tunes, some slight distortion made it sound as if his voice was traveling through time. When he got to the latter part of the verse, though, the hard rock bass, drums, and guitar piled on like gangbusters. Donovan here sang of a hurdy gurdy man singing songs of love, given an Indian tinge by washes of tambura. The mantra-like invocational tone was amplified in the circular chorus, with overlays of blissful vocal harmonies hazily mixing with Donovans repetitions of variations of the title phrase. Review by Richie Unterberger (AllMusic)
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 17:00:02 +0000
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