Mixed Bag by Richie Havens

Mixed Bag was Richie Havens' debut studio album, and it came out on Verve Folkways, the new folk imprint Verve Records had just launched, after he signed on with manager Albert Grossman. This is the record that first carried him to a wider audience: a rich baritone that seems to rise up from the floorboards, and a guitar attack unlike anybody else's, thumb-chorded in open E tuning so the strings ring out like a whole rhythm section.

It's frequently called his best work, and it was his first album to reach Billboard's charts, showing up on both the jazz and pop lists. Douglas Records later put out two unauthorized albums of material cut before these sessions, Electric Havens and Richie Havens' Record. One of Havens' old Greenwich Village pals, Jimi Hendrix, reportedly kept Mixed Bag and Electric Havens in his own record collection. Something Else Again came next.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.