“Follow” by Richie Havens

"Follow" finds Richie Havens singing a song that Jerry Merrick wrote, words and music both, on Mixed Bag, his debut album. It came out on Verve Folkways, then a brand-new folk imprint of Verve Records, once Havens had signed with manager Albert Grossman.

Mixed Bag is the record that let a wider public in on Havens' rich, deep baritone and his big, thumb-chorded guitar sound in open E tuning, and it's often called the best thing he ever made. It was also his first album to land on Billboard's charts, the jazz and pop lists both, and it was reportedly part of the record collection of his old Greenwich Village pal Jimi Hendrix.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.