From the start of her career, Jackie De Shannon was a great singer, with a strong instrument and a fine sense of how to invest her performances with emotion and nuance. However, DeShannon has said more than once that Liberty, the label that she was signed to through the 1960s, was more interested in her as a songwriter than a performer (she’d already penned a hit for Brenda Lee, “Alone With You”). So it was a real paradox that when she recorded her first LP in 1963, Liberty insisted that she record a set of covers rather than her own material. (The album included three tracks by Bob Dylan, only months after the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, though the label turned down her suggestion to cut a full album of his work.) DeShannon’s debut was…
Tag Archive: Jackie DeShannon
The 1960s were a peak time for Jackie DeShannon, as the singer/songwriter spent that decade not just prolifically releasing album after album of her own and scoring her biggest hits, but also writing numerous hit songs that became successes for other artists. Part of DeShannon’s process for her prolific output of this time was working out the arrangements and structures of her new creations with demos.
Love Forever: Demo Recordings 1966-1968 collects 16 such demos, focusing on a highly active two-year period in which DeShannon was constantly creating new ideas. The recordings here are by no means rough home-recorded sketches. DeShannon was in-demand as a songwriter, and operating at such a high level within the music industry…