Box of Surprises (RSD 25)

Dana Gillespie’s second long player and first UK album, Box of Surprises, is being reissued on vinyl for the first time.

Dana was at the vanguard of the emerging female singer-songwriter scene, and Box of Surprises is notable for being the first entirely self-penned album by a British female artist to be released in the UK on a major label. While other distinguished British women were publishing and singing their own songs at this time, including fellow Decca labelmates Twinkle and Marianne Faithfull, and in the wider folk/rock scene Sandy Denny and Christine McVie, none had released an album of entirely self-penned material. On the indie scene, Bridget St. John released her self-penned debut Ask Me No Questions around the same time.

Box of Surprises was produced by Mike Vernon, who was the leading producer of the British blues boom in the late ’60s, working on albums by John Mayall, Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack, and Savoy Brown. The latter were hired to be the house band on Box of Surprises. The result could have been an out-and-out British blues album, as heard on the title track, but the record is stylistically varied, with folk, country and western, and eastern influences all apparent in its makeup.

Aside from the bluesy title track, at least two other up-tempo songs on the album, “Like I’m A Clown” and “I Was A Book,” could have been singles. The album also contains excellent ballads, including “When Darkness Fell,” which recalls The Zombies, and “For David, the Next Day,” a country and western-tinged song written for Dana’s childhood friend David Bowie. Years later, Bowie referenced the track when he named his 2013 comeback album The Next Day. Eastern influences also appear on “Taffy” and “I Would Cry,” foreshadowing Dana’s later explorations of Indian music, and she revisits the acid folk of her debut LP’s title tune.

Box of Surprises is one of those elusive Decca diamonds that, like her debut, seemed to slip through the net and was seldom seen or heard. However, connoisseurs of ’60s music have gradually become aware of its charms. This new edition, remastered by Andrew Batt from the master tapes and featuring an introduction by Dana herself, will likely become just as collectable as the original.