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: Real Gone Music
…For this reissue, the tracklist has been expanded by six previously unreleased recordings of McKuen songs (including “If You Go Away”) and includes two more duets with the songwriter.
British pop icon Petula Clark puts her distinctive stylistic stamp on the songs of poet/songwriter Rod McKuen with Solitude & Sunshine: The Songs of Rod McKuen. Close friends since they first crossed paths in France in the 1960’s, Clark and McKuen long planned to work together, but it wouldn’t be until 2005 that their busy schedules lined up. Originally released in 2007 (and re-released as an expanded edition in 2025), Solitude & Sunshine is a lovingly produced collection that finds Clark singing some of McKuen’s best-known songs. These are nicely arranged performances with…