Jackie De Shannon

Jackie DeShannon was likely the first female rock & roller to have separate, parallel successes as a singer and a songwriter. Born Sharon Lee Myers, she grew up in Hazel, Kentucky and was a local child star, singing country songs on a radio show at age six. She continued performing through her teens and released singles under different names, settling on Jackie DeShannon when she signed to Liberty in 1960. Her first dozen singles (beginning with 1956's "I'm Crazy Baby") all missed the charts, but she'd also launched a songwriting partnership with Los Angeles native Sharon Sheeley. The team's first hits were "Dum Dum" and "Breakaway," respectively for Brenda Lee and Irma Thomas. Her first success as a singer came with the Sonny Bono-Jack Nitzsche song "Needles & Pins"; though her version flopped in America it went Top Ten in Canada; in England the Searchers heard the record and their cover was an international hit. The Searchers also covered "When You Walk in the Room," a song DeShannon wrote and recorded, and they scored again. Another of DeShannon's songs, "Don't Doubt Yourself Babe," was on the first Byrds album. Even without a hit of her own, DeShannon was now a rock & roll jet-setter, opening for the Beatles' first U.S. tour. An album, Breakin' It Up on the Beatles Tour came out as a tie-in, though it wasn't a live album. She also sang in a couple of teen movies, "Surf Party" (1964) and "C'mon, Let's Live a Little" (1965)-the latter also featuring Kim Carnes, who'd hit with a DeShannon song 14 years later. She was romantically linked with Elvis Presley and later Jimmy Page; the Led Zeppelin song "Tangerine" is said to be about her. Her first Top Ten as a singer didn't come until 1968, when she cut a Burt Bacharach/Hal David song that Dionne Warwick had turned down, "What the World Needs Now is Love." Continuing the peace-and-love theme, she wrote "Put a Little Love in Your Heart", a hit the following year and one that would be covered many times over the years (including an Al Green/Annie Lennox duet). DeShannon recorded through the '70s and '80s in a Laurel Canyon singer/songwriter vein, even writing a song called "Laurel Canyon"; her 1975 album New Arrangement included backup vocals by Brian Wilson. It also had the original version of "Bette Davis Eyes," which would be a Number One for Kim Carnes in 1981. DeShannon was named to the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 2010 and became an inspiration to a new generation of female singer/songwriters, including Liz Phair who portrayed her on the TV show "American Dreams" (NBC 2010-11). A new single, "For Isla," was released online in 2019.