Deep Purple - Shades Of Deep Purple (1968)

This might upset die-hard Deep Purple fans, but I've always felt that their first two albums are rather top-heavy on cover versions. Like most bands, when they started out they played covers to fill out their live sets, but when Purple recorded their first two albums they included a lot of those songs, making up about half the playing time of each record. Considering that both records were released in the same year of 1968, I wondered what their debut would have sounded like if they'd held off releasing anything until they had enough self-penned material to fill a whole album. By removing all the covers from those first two records and rejigging the track listing, we actually have exactly enough music to make up a 45 minute disc, which more represents what the band would become with their next few releases. Two of the tracks comprised instrumental introductions to covers of The Beatles' 'We Can Work It Out' and Skip James' 'I'm So Glad', and so as I didn't want to lose them I've grafted them onto a couple of Purple's own compositions. The result is a nice variety of rockers, ballads, and instrumentals, which I feel works pretty well, and as the album could still be called 'Shades Of Deep Purple', I've used the alternative Asian version of the cover for this post, with just a bit of improvement to the band photo.  

Track listing

01 And The Address
02 Listen, Learn, Read On
03 Wring That Neck
04 Prelude - a) Happiness b) The Shield
05 One More Rainy Day
06 Love Help Me
07 Anthem
08 a) Exposition b) Mandrake Root