When the first of Ace Records’ Jackie DeShannon retrospectives came out in 2009 chronicling all of her singles releases, I didn’t pick up on it immediately. By the time I did it was well into 2010, but I would have easily included it in my Best of 2009 as an archive release.
I already owned quite a bit of vinyl and most of her CD releases that have slowly become available during the digital age. I figured I had almost everything on it.
But when I finally picked up You Won’t Forget Me: The Complete Liberty Singles, Volume 1, it revealed not only an impressive and accurate chronology of her singles, but also B-sides and several cancelled releases all in mono as they had been originally released.
The set put things in perspective because even though I’ve been aware of DeShannon since I first was hooked by her version of Needles & Pins in 1963 and the follow-up, her own penned classic When You Walk In The Room, putting together her career at times has been confusing.
Ace’s second installment of the planned three-part series, Come And Get Me: The Complete Liberty and Imperial Singles, Volume 2 has recently been released and it is again a stellar issue.
The release shows off DeShannon’s prodigious skills as one of our greatest songwriters, singers, as well as an outstanding interpretive singer of other writers’ material, and to some extent pop icon. Although if you could somehow be an overlooked and under-appreciated icon, DeShannon fits the bill.
Despite huge global success with tunes such as Burt Bacharach’s What The World Needs Now Is Love and her own Put A Little Love in Your Heart, she is not that well-known to the general public. She is, however, an icon to musicians in the industry who either came up alongside her or followed her and are fully appreciative of her stature. That goes for her long-time fans as well.
One could conclude Deshannon was mishandled by Liberty, of which Imperial — the label she was eventually moved to — was a subsidiary in the 1960s, because of all the career shifts and changes in musical direction they made for her. But I love her take on it. She was willing to try anything. She fought for her own songs being placed on her albums. And no matter what the record company and producers threw at her, she always pulls it off. Continue reading Come and get more of the incomparable Jackie DeShannon
I caught The Beehive Queen and her remarkable band Rebel Montez Saturday night at Cafe Nine, a tiny club that might hold 200, in New Haven, Connecticut. Chris showed why she is one of the state’s legendary R&B/soul singers as I watched her play the first of two 90-minute sets that included original tunes from each of her five albums and a number of meticulously chosen covers that not only put her vast talents on full display but also carried a sense of blues and soul history.