Jackie DeShannon, real name Sharon Lee Myers, (born August 21, 1944) is an American singer/songwriter with a string of hit song credits from the 1960s onwards. She was one of the first female singer songwriters of the rock ‘n’ roll period.
Few performers have enjoyed as versatile a career as Jackie DeShannon, and although she made a couple of well-remembered Top Ten pop hits in the '60s, she's never achieved the level of success or artistic recognition she deserves. Starting as a pop-rockabilly singer as a teenager in the late '50s, she quickly developed into one of the L.A. pop scene's hottest songwriters, penning hits for Brenda Lee, the Fleetwoods, and Irma Thomas, and often collaborating with fellow noted songwriter Shari Sheeley.
She was a crucial midwife to the birth of folk-rock, with the wonderful singles "Needles and Pins" and "When You Walk in the Room." Using the circular, jangling guitar lines that would become a prime feature of early folk-rock, both of those songs were covered by the Searchers for much bigger hits; she also wrote "Don't Doubt Yourself Babe," covered by the Byrds on their first album, and penned a couple of Marianne Faithfull's early hits. In the mid-'60s, she also found time to write some songs with then-sessionman Jimmy Page, and perform as an opening act for the Beatles on the group's first big American tour.
Her famous affiliations and success as a songwriter have sometimes obscured her own enormous talents. She's a superb singer, capable of both sweet ballads and (more satisfyingly) a gutsy, soulfully husky delivery. She performed her own material with an honest, vulnerable, intelligent intensity that pre-figured the singer/songwriter movement by several years, and demonstrated command of pop, soul, hard rock, girl group, and country styles. Her greatest success, however, came not with her own material, but with Bacharach-David's "What the World Needs Now Is Love," which made the Top Ten in 1965.
Perhaps as a result, she gravitated toward more middle-of-the-road pop sounds in the last half of the '60s, though she cut a good deal of strong material, by both herself and emerging writers like Randy Newman, Tim Hardin, and Warren Zevon. The soft rock "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" gave her another Top Ten hit in 1969, and she made some well-received singer/songwriter albums in the 1970s. One of the songs from her '70s LPs, "Bette Davis Eyes," became a number one hit for Kim Carnes in 1981. "Put A Little Love In Your Heart" was performed as the closing number at the Music for UNICEF Concert, broadcast worldwide from the United Nations General Assembly in 1979 and Annie Lennox and Al Green teamed up to do a cover, creating a worldwide smash hit all over again in 1988. Find out more about this singer/songwriter at: http://www.jackiedeshannon.com/
Research info gathered at: www.allmusic.com
Visit my ezine: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and personal blog: http://www.copyat5.blogspot.com/
Few performers have enjoyed as versatile a career as Jackie DeShannon, and although she made a couple of well-remembered Top Ten pop hits in the '60s, she's never achieved the level of success or artistic recognition she deserves. Starting as a pop-rockabilly singer as a teenager in the late '50s, she quickly developed into one of the L.A. pop scene's hottest songwriters, penning hits for Brenda Lee, the Fleetwoods, and Irma Thomas, and often collaborating with fellow noted songwriter Shari Sheeley.
She was a crucial midwife to the birth of folk-rock, with the wonderful singles "Needles and Pins" and "When You Walk in the Room." Using the circular, jangling guitar lines that would become a prime feature of early folk-rock, both of those songs were covered by the Searchers for much bigger hits; she also wrote "Don't Doubt Yourself Babe," covered by the Byrds on their first album, and penned a couple of Marianne Faithfull's early hits. In the mid-'60s, she also found time to write some songs with then-sessionman Jimmy Page, and perform as an opening act for the Beatles on the group's first big American tour.
Her famous affiliations and success as a songwriter have sometimes obscured her own enormous talents. She's a superb singer, capable of both sweet ballads and (more satisfyingly) a gutsy, soulfully husky delivery. She performed her own material with an honest, vulnerable, intelligent intensity that pre-figured the singer/songwriter movement by several years, and demonstrated command of pop, soul, hard rock, girl group, and country styles. Her greatest success, however, came not with her own material, but with Bacharach-David's "What the World Needs Now Is Love," which made the Top Ten in 1965.
Perhaps as a result, she gravitated toward more middle-of-the-road pop sounds in the last half of the '60s, though she cut a good deal of strong material, by both herself and emerging writers like Randy Newman, Tim Hardin, and Warren Zevon. The soft rock "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" gave her another Top Ten hit in 1969, and she made some well-received singer/songwriter albums in the 1970s. One of the songs from her '70s LPs, "Bette Davis Eyes," became a number one hit for Kim Carnes in 1981. "Put A Little Love In Your Heart" was performed as the closing number at the Music for UNICEF Concert, broadcast worldwide from the United Nations General Assembly in 1979 and Annie Lennox and Al Green teamed up to do a cover, creating a worldwide smash hit all over again in 1988. Find out more about this singer/songwriter at: http://www.jackiedeshannon.com/
Research info gathered at: www.allmusic.com
Visit my ezine: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and personal blog: http://www.copyat5.blogspot.com/
1 comment:
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