PSYCHAMERICA PART 4

Richard Morton Jack hits the road again on a trip through the most far-out delights of America’s psychedelic era

THE DEEP

Psychedelic Moods (Cameo Parkway P 7051 / SP 7051) November 1966 £300 / £350

Despite having long enjoyed a high reputation among psych aficionados, remarkably little is known about The Deep. The project was the brainchild of Rusty Evans (born Marcus Uzilevsky, in 1940), a New Yorker who’d made a number of rockabilly singles going back to the late 50s, and at least three unremarkable solo folk LPs (1962’s Showdown, 1963’s Songs Of Our Land and 1964’s Railroad Songs), as well as a 1964 LP for Reprise as part of The All Night Singers, before tiring of the Greenwich Village scene.

In 1965, he joined the New Christy Minstrels for a few months before making a rare proto-psychedelic 45 with producer/songwriter Mark Barkan for the Musicor label, 1983/The Life Game (released in February 1966 and credited to Ry Cooper), before heading for Philadelphia. There he and Barkan began to collaborate on an album with guitarist David Bromberg and the enigmatically named D. Blackhurst.

Together they recorded Psychedelic Moods over a couple of days in August 1966. An eccentric but innovative collection of brief pop and garage-rock tunes, overlaid with sound effects, studio trickery and …

by Richard Morton Jack
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