Academic entertains a heartless address by Deep Purple? (6)
I believe the answer is:
damson
'deep purple?' is the definition.
'damson' can be an answer for 'purple?' (thesaurus). I'm not certain of the 'deep' bit.
'academic entertains a heartless address' is the wordplay.
'academic' becomes 'don' (I've seen this before).
'entertains' is an insertion indicator.
'heartless address' becomes 'ms' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'a'+'ms'='ams'
'don' placed around 'ams' is 'DAMSON'.
'by' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for damson that I've seen before include "Plum-coloured" , "Small fruit for nomads" , "Type of plum" , "Sort of plum" , "Small tart plum" .)