Shades of Deep Purple
| Shades of Deep Purple | ||||
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British album cover
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| Studio album by Deep Purple | ||||
| Released | July 1968 (US) September 1968 (UK) |
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| Recorded | 11–13 May 1968 | |||
| Studio | Pye Studios, London | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 43:27 | |||
| Label |
Tetragrammaton (US) Parlophone (UK) |
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| Producer | Derek Lawrence | |||
| Deep Purple chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Shades of Deep Purple | ||||
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| US cover | ||||
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| Remastered re-issue cover | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| PopMatters |   |
Shades of Deep Purple is the debut studio album by the English rock band Deep Purple, released in July 1968 on Tetragrammaton in the United States and in September 1968 on Parlophone in the United Kingdom. The band, initially called Roundabout, was the idea of former Searchers drummer Chris Curtis, who recruited Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore before leaving the project. The Mk. I line-up of the band was completed by vocalist/frontman Rod Evans, along with bassist Nick Simper and drummer Ian Paice, in March 1968.
After about two months of rehearsals, Shades of Deep Purple was recorded in only three days in May 1968 and contains four original songs and four covers, thoroughly rearranged to include classical interludes and sound more psychedelic. Stylistically the music is close to psychedelic rock and progressive rock, two genres with an ever-growing audience in the late 1960s.
The album was not well received in the UK, where it sold very little and did not chart. In the US, on the other hand, it was a success and the single "Hush", an energetic rock track originally written by Joe South, became very popular at the time, reaching number 4 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. The good sales of the album and the intense radio play of the single contributed largely to the attention Deep Purple would get in their early US tours and also during the 1970s. Modern reviews of the album are generally positive and consider Shades of Deep Purple an important piece in the history of Deep Purple.
When Deep Purple's first line-up came together in 1967, there was a moment of transition for the British music scene. Beat was still popular, especially in dance halls and outside the capital, but the tastes of young people buying records and filling up the clubs was rapidly changing in favour of blues rock, progressive rock and psychedelic rock. New bands like The Moody Blues, Procol Harum, and The Nice were pioneers in combining classical music with rock, using complex and daring arrangements. At the same time, psychedelia was making strides in the hedonistic swinging London society, where bands like Pink Floyd, The Pretty Things, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Traffic and Cream experimented with different forms of drug-induced rock music, in line with the hippie subculture coming from the USA. Many well-known acts, including The Beatles,The Rolling Stones and The Who, were influenced by the changing feel and added many elements of progressive and psychedelic rock to their albums of that period.
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