Jackie DeShannon: Biography

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• Discography
• Biography
• Related Artists

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• Kim Carnes
• Byrds
• Marianne Faithfull
• The Searchers
• Dusty Springfield
• Chris Clark
• Trini Lopez

• The Beatles
• Bob Dylan
• Loretta Lynn
• Ray Charles
• The Everly Brothers
• Wanda Jackson
• Elvis Presley

• Tracey Ullman
• The Searchers
• Kami Lyle
• Eurythmics
• Anne Murray

• Hal David
• Burt Bacharach
• Sonny Bono
• Jack Nitzsche

Born:

Aug 21, 1944 in Hazel, KY

Genres:

Classical Music, 60s Music, Pop Music, Rock Music, Singer/Songwriter Rock Music, Folk & Country Rock Music

Decades Active:

1960's|1970's|1980's|2000's

Artistic Quality

Medium

Cultural Impact

Medium

Popularity

Medium

Ratings Guide

Few performers have enjoyed as versatile a career as Jackie DeShannon, and although she made a couple of wellremembered Top Ten pop hits in the '60s, she's never achieved the level of success or artistic recognition she deserves. Starting as a poprockabilly 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. One of the first established rock figures to see the potential for crossbreeding rock and folk, she was a crucial midwife to the birth of folkrock, 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 folkrock, 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 thensessionman Jimmy Page, and perform as an opening act for the Beatles on the group's first big American tour.

DeShannon's 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 prefigured 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 BacharachDavid's "What the World Needs Now Is Love," which made the Top Ten in 1965. Perhaps as a result, she gravitated toward more middleoftheroad 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 wellreceived 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.

- Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide