Lost 1960s Bowie Tracks Surface Under 'Davie Jones'

Ten unreleased early David Bowie recordings, filed under his birth name Davie Jones, are being released on The Shel Talmy Recordings album.

Ten years ago, music historian and archivist Alec Palao found five unreleased songs by a young David Bowie on a 12-inch acetate in the collection of producer Shel Talmy, filed away under faint pencil markings reading "Davie Jones" — Bowie's birth name. According to the BBC, those five tracks plus five more previously unheard songs that came Palao's way after the initial discovery will be available to buy and stream from Friday, alongside demos and remastered songs, on a new posthumous album called The Shel Talmy Recordings. A limited edition vinyl will be sold at Record Store Day and HMV outlets.

The recordings date from 1965, when Bowie was still a teenager performing as Davie Jones in London clubs. BBC reports that Talmy — Bowie's first professional producer, whose collection also held material by The Kinks, The Who, Manfred Mann and The Easybeats — had kept the acetate among his own records. Palao told the BBC the tracks are "probably the most visceral, raw you'll ever hear the man," and called them a "fascinating window into London in 1965 and its possibilities," while cautioning that listeners looking for clues to the Bowie he became may find less of that than expected.

Dana Gillespie, an early collaborator who met Bowie after a Marquee Club performance when he was 17, told the BBC the songs show him "trying to find his voice. He was experimenting." She recalled Bowie rushing her into a listening booth near the Gioconda café on Denmark Street to hear "I Pity The Fool," a remastered version of which appears on the new album. Gillespie, who later worked with him on the "Ziggy Stardust" album, told the BBC she is "so happy that his early stuff hasn't been forgotten."

According to the BBC, the album is being released by Parlophone, a Warner Music Group subsidiary, after Palao and Talmy Enterprises Incorporated licensed the material to Warner, with royalties paid to Bowie's estate. The release taps into Bowie's enduring commercial pull: BBC notes that in 2022 he was named the best-selling vinyl artist of the 21st century by Music Week, ahead of The Beatles, and six of the unreleased tracks will be available on vinyl. Bowie, who died in 2016, achieved 11 number one albums after breaking through with 1969's "Space Oddity."