Music
The 82-year-old singer-songwriter, known for hits like “What the World Needs Now is Love,” has had an eventful career full of ups and downs
Wed, Nov 15, 2023, 10:16 a.m. GMT
When you say the name Jackie DeShannon, two things come to mind for most listeners. “A lot of people think I came out of nowhere and sang What the World Needs Now is Love and Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” DeShannon said of her two biggest hits. “They don’t know there’s a story there.”
In fact, it’s an incredibly long and varied one. As a singer and songwriter, DeShannon has pioneering connections to many of the most important musical forces of the last century, including Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Page and The Wrecking Crew. Her musical output is also widespread, spanning genres from soul to folk rock to standards, which can be heard on numerous solo albums and in numerous covers of songs she has written. But there’s more to DeShannon’s story, including a defining part that even her most ardent fans haven’t had access to — until now.
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DeShannon, born Sharon Lee Myers in Hazel, Kentucky, began her career as a child singing country songs with such finesse and bravura that she landed a regional radio show in 1954 at just 13 years old. Two years later, her mother began producing secret home recordings of these shows. Now this trove of recordings is finally being released under the title The Sherry Lee Show, which is reminiscent of her stage name at the time. On these newly unearthed recordings, she covers current hits from country stars like Patsy Cline, George Jones and Don Fleming. When asked what she thought of the little girl when she heard it now, the 82-year-old declared loudly: “I love her! I hear an innocence,” she said by phone from her home in Beverly Hills. “But I also hear someone who has a strong dream and a lot of drive.”
An attentive listener will also notice nuances. At 15 years old, DeShannon’s grasp of the emotion and history of the country standards she sang is uncanny. Part of this comes from growing up in a multi-generational family of musicians. “On weekends, everyone would take out their violins and guitars and sit on my grandmother’s porch and sing and play,” DeShannon said.
Her father and uncle had a band modeled after the Delmore Brothers. “It wasn’t all out-country,” the singer said. “It was country blues. My dad was influenced by listening to Jimmy Reed and Bobby Blue Bland, and so was I.”
Her radio recordings also showcase her love of R&B and rockabilly through covers of songs that became hits for Fats Domino and Elvis Presley. Because all of these recordings were made secretly by her mother, the sound is raw and primitive. “I’m proud of that!” said DeShannon. “There is so much that is clean and smooth now. We need more hooligans.”
Jackie DeShannon in Laurel Canyon in the 1960s Photo: Sue Cameron, courtesy of DeShannon Communications
It was this raw quality of music that first interested DeShannon in Elvis’ early records. When she was 20, she not only admired the singer, she also got to know him. It was said the two were dating, a rumor she finds funny. “I just enjoyed him as a friend,” she said. “I used to go to his house and sing gospel music when he had the Jordanaires there. He was very polite and humble.”
It was another rocker, Eddie Cochran, who suggested the singer move to LA in 1960 to further her career. At this time she chose the deliberately androgynous stage name Jackie DeShannon and met Sharon Sheeley, who became her early writing partner. “We collaborated on the lyrics,” the singer said. “But the melodies always came to mind first. I would lick or hook myself and work from there.”
The pair landed a publishing deal with Liberty Records, which introduced their songs to anyone who happened to walk into the studio. They initially hit with songs for Brenda Lee, including “Heart in Hand,” which made the Top 20, and “Dum Dum,” which made the Top 5. DeShannon soon received his own recording contract with Liberty, but quickly ran into the restrictions placed on female artists at the time. While she was allowed to write and record her own material – already a rarity at the time – she also had a vision for how these songs should be produced and arranged. And that didn’t fly. “Back then they thought, ‘How would a woman know what to do in a studio?’ “It’s impossible,” she said. “I went in with an idea and the producer said, ‘It has to be done this way.’ If you suggested they do it differently, you were labeled as difficult.”
Her problems with Liberty began with her very first album, a self-titled effort from 1963. For this project, DeShannon had a bold idea, inspired by an event she had just attended. “I saw Bob Dylan’s first concert at Town Hall,” she remembers. “In the first half he sang traditional blues songs like See That My Grave Is Kept Clean. I was like, “That’s nice, but I don’t understand the fuss.” In the second set he came with songs like “Don’t Think Twice,” “It’s Alright,” “With God on Our Side” and “The Times They.” are A Changin’” back. I’m crazy.”
Consequently, she told Liberty that she wanted to make a full album of Dylan songs, which would have made a historic statement at the time. They balked and allowed her to cut only a few of them, including Don’t Think Twice, a song they felt should be the single. Liberty disagreed. Shortly thereafter, Peter Paul and Mary’s version of this song became a Top 10 hit. For DeShannon’s second album in 1964, she recorded a piece she wrote that became a classic: When You Walk in The Room. While their version barely reached the top 100, a cover by The Searchers became a worldwide hit and inspired numerous later interpretations. The music DeShannon wrote for this song had the jingle-jangle sound of folk rock, a genre whose birth the next year was entirely due to the Byrds. In fact, The Byrds covered another DeShannon song, Don’t Doubt Yourself Babe, on their 1965 debut. “I don’t want to be the person who says, ‘I should have credit,'” DeShannon said. “It just happened the way it did.”
But it kept happening that way, partly, DeShannon believes, because Liberty Records saw them that way. “Unbeknownst to me, the label chose to build its publishing company with me as an author rather than truly marketing me as an artist,” she said. “Let’s just say it was very disappointing.”
At the same time, DeShannon had some great experiences. In 1964, she was part of a group of acts that opened the Beatles’ first American tour. Given the intensity of Beatlemania, this was a mixed blessing for some of the artists on the bill. “Some of them were really upset that the crowd wasn’t calling out to them,” DeShannon remembers. “I laughed and said, ‘Well, are you putting people in seats?’ The crowd was screaming, “We want the Beatles!!” But I sang the whole time and had a lot of fun.”
Better yet, she had her first big hit the next year. Burt Bacharach and Hal David had great success writing songs for Dionne Warwick. But when they brought Warwick “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” she found it preachy and rejected it. “The song sounded great to me!” DeShannon said: “There’s something churchy about the melody that I picked up on. And the lyrics were great.”
Soon after, DeShannon made another important connection. During a recording session in England she needed to find a guitarist. The producers suggested Jimmy Page, an art student at the time who was doing session work on the side. “I was very spoiled in my sessions with guitarists because I worked with James Burton and Glen Campbell,” said the singer. “I told the producer, ‘He must be really good.’ When Jimmy Page played me my song he sounded like Segovia. I knew straight away he was a genius.”
She was attracted to him too, and the feeling was mutual. The two dated for a while and it was written that he later wrote the wistful Led Zeppelin song “Tangerine” for her. DeShannon said she had no idea if that was true, but added, “If it was written for me, I’m honored.”
By this point, she had written much of the material on her albums, ahead of singer-songwriters like Laura Nyro, Janis Ian, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King (who was writing but not recording at the time). DeShannon rarely gets enough credit for this, too. “It takes marketing and advertising,” she said. “I didn’t have it.”
By 1968, however, she had enough influence to have more influence on perhaps her greatest album, Laurel Canyon. While the lyrics she wrote for the album glorified the famous LA music scene of the time, the soulful music she created sounded more like Dusty in Memphis. “The Laurel Canyon album was my baby,” DeShannon said. “It was an organic thing that captured a place and a time.”
Although the album didn’t chart, her song “Put A Little Love in Your Heart” made it to the Top 5 the following year. In 1975, DeShannon co-wrote and recorded a song (Bette Davis Eyes) that no one was listening to at the time paid attention. Six years later, a version by Kim Carnes topped the charts worldwide. DeShannon’s original version features a strange rhythm that doesn’t sound like the one in Carnes’ version. “Can you maybe guess why?” DeShannon said with a sardonic laugh. “I had no control over this situation. My demo was more rock and roll. The producer turned it into a shuffle.”
Despite this frustration, DeShannon emphasized several times in our interview that she has “no sour grapes at all.” I’m happy with the success I’ve had,” she said.
She is also happy that the richness of her career is now being made available to a wider audience. To toast Sherry Lee’s new release, she will be honored by the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville this April. And next year there will be an album of unreleased demos from 1961 and 1962 that have a soul touch, both in original songs and covers of early Ray Charles tunes. “I’m very happy that this is all finally coming out,” DeShannon said.
She is even happier that the gender power dynamic in the music business has almost reversed and artists like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are among the biggest stars. “It was really difficult to be a woman back then,” she said. “It’s amazing what’s happening now. I couldn’t be happier about the change.”
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