Shades of Deep Purple is the debut 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 few copies and did not chart. In North America, on the other hand, it was a success, reaching number 24 on the US Billboard 200 and number 19 on the Canadian RPM chart. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)