Leitch Your Children: Donovan 80

Donovan - Hurdy Gurdy Man

In a post guaranteed to make even the most eternally youthful feel as old as canned goods from a WWII bomb shelter, we've got the 80th birthday of a real windcatcher here to end one week and start another.

This guy has had quite a life too.

This tape I worked on, from the mid Eighties, has a dozen moments in it where you can tell.

His between song patter alone is worth the price of admission, like when he's introducing one of his signature songs, Hurdy Gurdy Man.

Example: "When I wrote this song, there were four Beatles, a Beach Boy.... and Mia Farrow."

He then goes on to describe sitting in the Maharishi's lair with George Harrison and a guitar, and how George volunteered a verse that he didn't end up putting in the final lyrics. "Would you like to hear George's verse?" he asks the audience, mystically.

The whole hour and a half is kind of a crash course in what it sounds like when an old hand places an audience into the palm of his, and keeps them right there.

So yeah! Do you feel old yet? Donovan -- last name, Leitch, father of Ione Skye, 1960s trippy folk boffin seen chasing Bob Dylan around England in Don't Look Back -- is 80 today.

As I write this I wonder what a hippie trippy Sixties icon like Don must feel about everything that's been going on in the world these days.

I'd imagine it's somewhat like how he must feel about that YouTube video I watched the other day, that ranked Hurdy Gurdy Man -- possibly the most benign, peacefeelingly psychedelic '60s anthem of all time -- as having the distinction of being the scariest use ever of a pop song -- the kids call these "needledrops" now -- in a major motion picture.

Anyway he was born this day in Glasgow in 1946 as a charter Baby Boomer, so in honor of that milestone I rebrewed this 90 minutes from the old Catalyst in Santa Cruz, using the infamous AI splitter tool to separate the vocal from the guitar a little better, because there was originally a lot of boomy bleed betwixt the two. Which I manually fixed over a whole day's work, because AI doesn't do that part... and I wouldn't trust it to regardless!

Donovan

The Catalyst

Santa Cruz, California, USA

11.13.1985

01 Josie

02 Isle of Islay

03 Catch the Wind

04 The Lullaby of Spring

05 Sunshine Superman

06 Brother Sun, Sister Moon

07 Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)

08 Happiness Runs

09 Lalena

10 Hurdy Gurdy Man

11 Donovan talks about Czechoslovakia

12 Living On Love

13 Mellow Yellow

14 Little Tin Soldier

15 There Is a Mountain

16 Jennifer Juniper

17 Atlantis

18 Season of the Witch

Total time: 1:29:05

disc break goes after Track 08

Tracks 01-13 & 17-18: late set

Tracks 14-16: early set

Donovan Leitch - guitar, harmonica & vocals

4-channel cassette masters, matrixing 2 channels from the soundboard and 2 stage mics

de/remuxed for slightly better balance, edited & remastered by EN, May 2026
506 MB FLAC/direct link

I'd like to think this was one of those shows I really improved sonically, and I feel I got it good and crispy minus the muddy lows, as they can often get with these guy-and-a-guitar singer/songwriter types. All throughout eternity, the crying of humanity etc etc.

I kid, I kid. Donovan is a survivor and like I was saying, he's led a lifetime most people would dismiss as exaggerated lore out of some sort of fictive fantasy, but which for him was just 1946 until this moment and beyond!--J.

there goes the roly poly man
he's singing songs of love

Some Like It Yacht: Christopher Cross 75

Christopher Cross - I Really Don't Know Anymore

We'll begin giving May its flowers with this guy, because why not? I've had a huge crush on him since I was a teenager, dare I confess.

Beyond my pathetic adolescent desires, he's written some pretty timeless tunes and is, if you don't know, an extremely underrated guitar player.

One time, Deep Purple came to San Antonio when he was a teenager, and Ritchie Blackmore got food poisoning, which prevented him from performing that night.

In a mythical rawk moment akin to that Quadropheniac time Keith Moon passed out from horse tranquilizers and Pete Townshend pulled a kid out of the Cow Palace crowd to drum with The Who, in stepped our hero, who knew the Purple set note for note and blew half of Texas away.

That was in 1970, way before he became, for a time at the turn of the 1980s, the biggest thing going.

Then there's the even-more-mythical Stratocaster guitar that he traded in for a Les Paul in the mid-1970s, which resurfaced as Stevie Ray Vaughn's preferred "Number One" instrument when he ended up buying it from the same Austin music shop a while later.

Those are just his claims to pre-fame, because at the end of the Seventies, he -- real name: Christopher Geppert -- got signed to a major label. Well, his band, for which he was the main, driving force, got signed.

In typical music biz fashion, the label marketed his first record -- which became as big as anything current at the time -- as if the name of the band was his real name.

In the grand tradition of advertising/promotion becoming real life, it stuck... and Christopher Cross was born.

You know what happened next. For about 3 years he was at the top of the charts with a handful of songs that have become standards, with Steely Dan famously asking him to play on Gaucho (he declined, totally intimidated). He was also -- in 1980, when his first LP had more top ten hits on it than Star Wars had imitation spinoffs -- the only artist up to that time ever to have swept the Grammys, and held that (OK, somewhat dubious) title until Billie Eilish did it more recently.

Then, speaking of dubious music doings, MTV -- which was hungry like the wolf for profits from the then-new music video revolution -- blew up, and the industry moved on to people with more perfect faces, who were wearing a whole lot more makeup and waistlining a little less paunch.

Of course being let out to pasture by the vile, venal music biz didn't deter him from forging a career that started in what then was called AOR -- now it's got another name some of its most frontline artists despise -- and progressed into different areas all his own making. Right now he's out with Toto on a big summer tour, like a hot Yacht Rock SWAT team.

Here he is at the absolute pinnacle of his popularity, out showcasing his 2nd record Another Page at the historic, sold-out Budokan in Tokyo.

Christopher Cross

Nippon Budokan

Tokyo, Japan

2.2.1983

01 Never Be the Same

02 Deal 'Em Again

03 Poor Shirley

04 Think of Laura

05 Say You'll Be Mine

06 Mary Ann

07 Sailing

08 Minstrel Gigolo

09 Baby Says No

10 Talking In My Sleep

11 I Really Don't Know Anymore

12 Nature of the Game

13 Love Found a Home

14 No Time for Talk

15 Words of Wisdom

16 The Light Is On

17 All Right

18 Long World/band introductions

19 Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)

20 Ride Like the Wind

21 Beach Boys medley (Surfin' USA/I Get Around/Do You Wanna Dance/Fun, Fun, Fun) 

22 Ride Like the Wind (EN extended guitar remix)

Total time: 1:45:19

disc break goes after Track 11

Track 21 is from Nakano Sunplaza, Tokyo JP 11.7.1980

Track 22 is remixed to feature the playout guitar solo 

that was buried and prematurely faded on the original 1979 "Christopher Cross" LP

Japan personnel:

Christopher Cross - guitar & vocals

Rob Meurer - keyboards & vocals

Stephen Barber - keyboards (Tracks 01-20)

Jeff Sova - keyboards (Tracks 01-20)

Andy Salmon - bass & vocals

Tommy Taylor - drums & vocals

James Fenner - percussion

Hank Hehmsoth - keyboards & vocals (Track 21 only)

with

Toshiyuki Honda - tenor & alto saxophones

Tracks 01-21 are sourced from the 2024 bootleg silver 3CD set, limited to 100 copies, 

entitled "Japan Tour 80-83" on the Empress Valley Supreme Disc label (EVSD-1501/2/3), 

which themselves seem to be sourced from off-air FM captures -- from original NHK-FM broadcasts -- 

of indeterminate (but likely master cassette) origin

Track 22 is from the original 24-track multitrack stems from 1979, remixed by EN December 2024

remastered for unity by EN, April 2026
686 MB FLAC/direct link

A word about the last bonus track: it stems (pun intended) from this Rick Beato video I saw a couple of years ago that was all about how the ripping, facemelting guitar solo at the end of dude's signature hit Ride Like the Wind -- legendarily penned on a wild LSD trip --  was criminally buried in the final mix of the song. So, a couple of days later, I tracked down the multitrack stems for it, and remixed it to amp up just that very playout solo... and, as it turned out, Rick Beato knew exactly wtf he was talking about.

I've got a pretty mighty May mashed up over here at Bliss Bottoms, but let's keep the Yacht behind the horse and begin it by celebrating songwriter extraordinaire Christopher Cross -- born this day in 1951, and still out there Sailing.--J.

International Jazz Ladies' Day: Humphrey At Last

Bobbi Humphrey - Chicago, Damn

I shouldn't be doing this, but sometimes I just have to challenge myself to create a viable post out of nowhere, on no notice, from no preparation at all.

I was just sitting here at 6 AM getting ready to wrap it up and slumber, when I noticed reading my phone that today is International Jazz Day.

Jazz being unfortunately too much a man's game, and this page being the same, drives me to strike a blow against both of those constraints because why not? Too much of life and the world are about witholding for perceived advantage to the self. I'm here to share music.

So there I was, sitting here wondering what on Earth could I post out of whole cloth that I already have here, that would be worthwhile and not just a perfunctory placeholder?

Then I realized that merely a few days ago, one of my all-time super duper favorite musicians of any genre -- whom I've never covered in 12+ years of doing this -- turned 76 years young.

There was but a singular field for endeavor, as my old high school English teacher Mr. Maze used to say.

So I created the text file for this post, fixed the artwork I had made over 10 years ago (!), and here we are, ready to celebrate both International Jazz Day -- which is based out of Chicago this year, hence the song sample above! -- and the birthday of flute legend Bobbi Humphrey, who was born 5 days and 76 years prior to now.

If you are somehow unfamiliar with Bobbi Humphrey -- herself one of the pillars of the subgenre we sometimes call Soul Jazz -- she was discovered by the late Lee Morgan upon arriving from her native Texas in the early Seventies, and right before he so tragically passed in 1972 he had her in his working band and was producing her first recordings as a leader.

There's even footage of her with him, on the indescribably insane PBS show coincidentally called Soul!, in early 1972 just before he left this world.

She could have faded away into obscurity, but instead she followed up her debut as a leader -- which Morgan had assisted in creating in 1971 -- with album after album of highly funkatized, ridiculously well-constructed Fusion, many of them produced by the just-as-legendary Larry & Fonce Mizell for the Blue Note label that had begun, by that time, to rely on the ever-more-popular Jazz-Funk stuff to stay afloat.

Anyway, there are less than no ROIOs of her -- talk about insane! an artist who's brought joy to audiences for 55 years and no live broadcasts at all! -- but I've had this mixtape of her best 1970s cuts in my phone for over a decade, and it hasn't gotten any less awesome.

Bobbi Humphrey

Ladies' Day

Bobbi Humphrey In the '70s

1971-1979

CD1

01 Ain't No Sunshine

02 Blacks and Blues

03 Chicago, Damn

04 Don't Knock My Funk

05 El Mundo De Maravillas (A World of Beauty)

06 Fajehzo

07 Fun House

08 Harlem River Drive

09 Home-Made Jam

10 Jasper Country Man

11 Jealousy

12 Ladies' Day

13 Lonely Town, Lonely Street

14 Love When I'm In Your Arms (7'' version)

CD2

01 Lover to Lover

02 Mestizo Eyes

03 New York Times

04 Nubian Lady

05 San Francisco Lights

06 Set Us Free

07 Smiling Faces Sometimes

08 Spanish Harlem

09 Sunset Burgundy

10 Sweeter Than Sugar

11 The Trip

12 Uno Esta

13 Virtue

14 You Make Me Feel So Good

Total time: 2:36:32

compendium of the 1970s output of flute legend Bobbi Humphrey

selected, assembled and remastered for unity by EN sometime in the mid-2010s
987 MB FLAC/direct link

I'll be back, come what May, in just a couple of days to launch the Yacht from the Rock as we start another month. But when I noticed what day it was, I couldn't help but try to turn the super sausagefest that Jazz can sometimes resemble into a Ladies' Day celebration, and give Int'l Jazz Day some female flight flavor with the flute of the forever fantastic Bobbi Humphrey! Which I hope you can forgive.--J.

Orquesta Bien

Willie Colón - Oh Que Será

We're closing out April with a true pillar of Salsa music, who passed at the end of February but who was born on this day in 1950.

Born, like my own parents, in the South Bronx in NYC. Almost as soon as he could hold a brass instrument, he gravitated immediately toward the trumpet and then trombone.

He was signed to the seminal Fania label by age 15, and by the time Willie Colón had made it to 17, he'd made his first record as a leader.

It didn't take long for him to evolve into a kind of kingpin of Salsa music, composing many of its most iconic songs and collaborating with literally the entire firmament of the genre's stars in a career in which he sold over 30 million records worldwide.

If his music had a consistent theme shared across his whole output, it would have to do with how deeply he identified with his ancestral Puerto Rico, with a lot of his music exploring the often complex realities of living life as a Puerto Rican in New York City.

Which if you think about it, is almost like being American twice -- PR and NYC being unique geographic and cultural locations unto themselves, but both technically still in the US -- while still fully retaining your Latin heritage and outlook.

He also had great hats, did I mention the classy, always signature-stylish headwear? The suave, invincible outlaw Gangster image that became so popular in the 1970s is said to have had something to do with his 1960s album covers. I dunno about that, but I do know that if I had hats a trillionth this fly, I'd be on a boat in the Bahamas somewhere, being fed grapes by incredibly attractive, musically literate college boys wearing next to nada.

Did I also fail to mention that, in another one of those criminal omissions that make people like me tear their hard drives out, there aren't any ROIOs or unissued concert tapes of Willie Colón that circulate?

Stuff like this sends me onto my super duper YouTube Premium account faster than a teenage boy searching Porn Hub for the first time. Desperately trying to find something I can make into something, so there'll at least be one ROIO around of an artist as undeniably formative as someone of this lofty, almost royal stature.

And hey, bully for me... I found one suitable for processing, so to say.

This show sounded great and went strong and lossless all the way to 16 kHz in the spectral analysis tool I tend to spend almost as much time looking at as YouTube itself.

When I paid close attention, however, it was impossible not to notice that the presence of the bass in the music gradually disappeared over the course of it, until by the fourth tune it was essentially quieter than the World Series aspirations of your average Met fan after another disastrous doubleheader.

When I split it apart to isolate the bass, you could see that dude had come on very loud and boisterous with the slappy poppy thing bass players are sometimes keen to exhibit for women in Row 4 Seat C, that the young ladies might imagine what fingers that impactful might do after a few cocktails back in the hotel room after the gig. It was visually obvious from the waveform that the soundman was duly offended by such behavior, and kept turning him down and down until he was almost not there anymore!

But the music was so good and worth it, it meant I had to go through it tune by tune and make the bass presence somewhat consistent over the 83 minutes of exquisite Salsa Nirvana it comprises. What happened with the girl in the fourth row I'm afraid I can't say.

I clicked so many times adjusting it that the battery had to be changed in my wireless mouse, but at least I got Mr. Slappy Poppy out from under his punishment after 16 years in the sound guy's doghouse. Here, Hear! Let's see what you think...

La Orquesta de Willie Colón

Centro de Convenciones Scencia de La Molina

Lima, Perú

9.10.2010

01 Asia

02 Oh Que Será

03 Medley Contrabando

04 Idilio

05 Mi Sueño

06 Sin Poderte Hablar

07 Gitana

08 El Gran Varon

Total time: 1:23:35

disc break goes after Track 04

Willie Colón - trombone, vocals & percussion

Néstor Agudelo - trombone

Cupertino Bermúdez - tenor & soprano saxophones

Ennio Gaty - piano

Juan Carlos García - bass

Lucho Arroyo - synthesizer

Chino Rey - timbales & percussion

Javier Ortega - congas & percussion

Jairo Rosales - bongós & percussion

Willie Garcés & Janio Coronado - coros & percussion

256/48k audio extracted from an HD YouTube premium video

spectral analysis is lossless to 16 kHz FM cutoff

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, denoised, demuxed, remuxed for better balance & remastered by EN, April 2026
538 MB FLAC/direct link

I realize it's kinda cheap for a FLAC dogmatic like me to do these this way, but if they go lossless to the standard FM 15 kHz, or even the preFM 20 like some of them do, what makes them different from a radio rebroadcast you'd get off of the WDR in Germany or on France Musique? I gotta do something since Bill's Bardo of Boosted Boots went off the air, am I right? Plus this one sounds fantastic, especially since the bass is now more discernable than the Oort cloud is in the distant night sky from Earth.

I'm getting into May already, so if at the end of next month you hear them on the Infotainment News channels warning you of some sort of ridiculous DDOS attack or whatever, it ain't gonna be "the terrorists" at all. It's not even gonna be the traditional False Flag, brought to you by your friends at Dassom Industries... no, that's just drama for your momma without so much as a merciful comma. If the internet goes down, rest assured it's just gonna be little ol' Joshy, breaking the servers into tiny silicon fragments with posts all about the 100th birthday of Miles Davis.

But that's then, this is now. And now we honor Salsa superman Willie Colón, who'd have been 76 today had he not split the soundstage 7 weeks previous. When you absorb this show, you'll begin to understand that only his body has gone, but his music -- eternally burning with life and fire -- is never gonna have any problem moving yours.--J.

4.28.1950 - 2.21.2026