Recommended Albums #16

Donovan: HMS Donovan (1971)

Come take a look with me

In an old-fashioned picture book…

Donovan beckons thusly on this 1971 two-LP, 28-song treasure, as he leads you back to the long-ago childhood in the English countryside that you never had. This album finds Donovan boldly following his muse away from chart-oriented pop (he’d never have another Top 40 single) toward fanciful folk aimed at children and adults who remember how to be child-like.

While it appeared to be (commercially speaking at least) a counterintuitive move, Donovan had spent most of a decade at the center of the pop music universe and was seemingly content to forget moving product in favor of moving the imagination. The less travelled path led to a truly beautiful, timeless creation.

HMS Donovan is a collection of English poems, nursery rhymes and children’s literature set to melody, alongside Donovan’s originals. The work of Lewis Carroll, Sydney Carter and W.B. Yeats is at home next to Donovan’s own beguiling “young Folk”. Where he marries melody to existing material, his tunes suit the lyrics perfectly, as if the two had been penned by the same hand–a mark of true songwriting genius. The acoustic guitar performances are sublime throughout.

It all combines for a truly magical listening experience, evoking childhood innocence and the wonder of an age when there seemed to be a bit of magic in the world beyond the garden gate.

Epic, Donovan’s label at the time, wanted no part of releasing HMS Donovan, so Pye’s “underground” Dawn imprint did so. My copy looked like ordinary black vinyl until you held it up to light and it turned a rich ruby-red color as the light shone through it.

This is one of the most unusual albums ever released by a major pop star, and I treasured my deluxe gatefold vinyl copy with its beautiful artwork and enclosed poster. Each song on the record was referenced somewhere in the double-sided cover painting, making it a treat for the ears and the eyes in the days when a young lad would pore over the cover art while awash in the musical magic.

Stylistically, the stripped-down acoustic arrangements ideally suit Donovan’s simple, beautiful songs. In fact, it was the albums which followed HMS that failed in this regard: Donovan’s subsequent (pop) albums in the 70’s suffer, without exception, from overproduction. He’d come back to a more folk-oriented songwriting style than in the Sunshine Superman 60’s but allowed producers to clutter the mixes with extraneous horns, keyboards and percussion that only detracted from the purity of the gorgeous finger-picked folk melodies he was putting across.

Concurrently, though, he was releasing live albums that were among his best output, because he stuck with spare arrangements for the live performances–acoustic guitar, vocal, harmonica and occasional flute or cello. Donovan is almost matchless as a musician in terms of his capacity to entertain solo with only an acoustic guitar. The studio albums where he stuck to this formula are naturally among his best.

On the album’s first two tracks, Donovan gives sympathetic musical settings to Lewis Carroll poems–both from the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland sequel Through the Looking Glass.

“The Walrus and the Carpenter” is entertaining as anything, with sped-up and slowed voices, exaggerated English accents and false starts included.

“Jabberwocky” is the nonsense poem that gave several new words to the English language. No one “chortled” prior to this poem’s writing, because chortling wasn’t a thing. Likewise, it wasn’t known that “brillig” was a time of day, specifically 4:00 in the afternoon–the time to begin boiling things for dinner. There are countless more examples I could cite, but I’ll resist the temptation to go down that particular, uh, rabbit hole.

Celia of the Seals” was written in tribute to English former model and animal activist Celia Hammond, who went from modeling in furs to campaigning against the fur trade and animal cruelty. Donovan’s “vonya, vonya, vonya” in the song lyric is his attempt to imitate the call of the seals.

“The Voyage of the Moon” is the type of beautiful epic narrative folk song Donovan showed a particular talent for, and a perfect addition to a lullaby playlist for the little ones in your life.

The children’s music theme of HMS Donovan ensured that it would never be a big seller. Its 19th century English sensibility guaranteed it would never chart in America. But its charm and musical quality have given it cult classic status and many of Donovan’s most devoted fans cite it as a favorite.

Listen to: “The Walrus and the Carpenter”