Songfacts®:

• "Kentucky Woman" was written by Neil Diamond, who recorded it in 1967 when he was with the legendary Bang Records. Diamond still uses this song as part of his set in concerts. It reached #22 on the Billboard charts for him. Deep Purple included this song as their standard policy of putting their own spin on established, popular songs and including them in each album.
• Music scholars sometimes point to Deep Purple's "Kentucky Woman" as the first heavy metal song. That is a debatable point, most especially since the group themselves deny this is so. One might also consider Deep Purple's earlier "Hush", from their Shades of Deep Purple album, as a contender for the title. And that's just Deep Purple - we won't get into the debate if you include other groups and artists.
• The single release of "Kentucky Woman" had "Wring That Neck" as the B-side, which was titled "Hard Road" in the US release. In Australia, it was released as a double-A side with "Hush." Their US label Tetragrammaton seemed to be quite impatient for the band to take off, meddling a lot in the early record releases.
• The Book of Taliesyn is one of the most enigmatic albums we have from that era. The cover art was done by British illustrator John Vernon Lord (no relation to the keyboardist), for which he was paid a mere £30 and never even got the original print back - and this was his only venture into album-cover art. Musically, the album is comprised of hauntingly mysterious psychedelic works which seem to evoke Arthurian legend or Tolkien-esque fantasy. The title is a reference to the works of the sixth century Welsh poet Taliesin, a renowned bard who is believed to have sung at the courts of at least three Celtic British kings. You can't begin to explain this album to anyone.