April 09, 2008 Earworm

Flush with Led Zeppelin cash and the pay-offs from other wise shopping in the wake of the summer of love, Ahmet Ertegan and Jerry Wexler began signing up the female vocalists who's voices he'd grown to love during the sixties. Starting with Dusty in 68, Lulu and Cher in 69 - the latter having already been recording for them as a duo with Sonny. In the wake of Carole King's tapestrophic success, they pulled in their own singer/songwriter, Jackie DeShannon, in 1972. Dusty and Lulu would pay off with hit singles and critical appreciation but the albums would be considered flops. Cher and Jackie, both coming from the Liberty family of labels, would end up little more than tax write-offs at the time. The L.A. polish of Jackie's Liberty/Imperial records is wiped raw as the Muscle Shoals gang brought her closer to her Kentucky roots where, by age six, she was singing country standards on local radio shows. Ending up closer to Aretha than to Carole King, the "What The World Needs Now" girl was barely recognizable and the "Jackie" album sank without a trace

But some grown up in my world bought "Jackie" and I think that I've known it as well as I've known the alphabet for as long as I've known the alphabet. As a kid, a line from "Brand New Start" made me laugh as it conjured up Looney Tune images: "...and here I am, at your front door - just knocking with my heart...". Now, having the painful pleasure of knowing that feeling, I can't hear it without a sharp intake of breath, and admiring its perfection even as I wince at the memories. The rest of the song is just as good and Jackie's vocal is perfection; getting rawer and rougher the more she bares her soul. That rawness may be why she lost the singer/songwriter race with "Tapestry", an album that, for all it's beauty, was crafted as meticulously as any of Carole King penned forty-fives for Bobbie Vee or Steve Lawrence.

Fortunately, the good folks at Rhino Handmade also believe in a brand new start and pulled this one-time lost masterpiece of its genre from the dust bin and gave it a fresh mastering and new lease on life back in 2003 with a numbered limited edition. A quick glance over at Amazon shows that it's still in print which could mean that the world is catching on or is still missing a still fresh spin on the singer/songwriter genre.