Members of Led Zeppelin helped create Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” in the studio. The tune paved the way for a lot of the band’s later work. Donovan himself argued that Jimmy Page’s ...

If you’ve never heard a hurdy-gurdy before, you’re in for a treat. Not many people have, since they’re instruments which are uncommon outside of some eastern European communities.

Twenty-seven years ago, in search of a hurdy-gurdy master, Donald Heller wandered into a music shop in Budapest. There, he saw a beautiful maiden, an ancient-looking stringed instrument in her lap ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The hurdy-gurdy is the duck-billed platypus of instruments. It has strings but you don’t pick or strum them.

Future Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones worked on Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man.” Donovan explained that Jimi Hendrix was originally supposed to work on the song ...

In 1968, Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan released Hurdy Gurdy Man – the influential title track of his The Hurdy Gurdy Man album from the same year, which featured the contributions of a ...