August 21, 2009 Earworm

Jackie DeShannon turned 65 today so I have to give a shout to my first pop star
crush. With that in mind, not that I need a reason, I've been humming "Be Good Baby", one of those of those fluffy confections she whipped up with Jack Nitzsche back in '65.

Have some cake, a great weekend, and be good.

Collector's Choice: Jackie DeShannon re-issues

Self-titled debut lp, "Jackie DeShannon"

Two-fer containing 1968s "Me About You" and 1970s "To Be Free". Jackie's cover of Tim Hardin's "Reason To Believe" is included as a bonus track.

"New Arrangement", her lone lp for Columbia from 1975 containing the original version of "Bette Davis Eyes", the gorgeous "Boat To Sail". Three previously unreleased tracks, "Pure Natural Love", "Deep Into Paradise", and "Somebody Turn the Music On" provide an incentive to buy if you've already purchased the Japanese re-issue from a few years back. Take note that the single version of "Let The Sailors Dance", included in that Japanese release, is not included in this format although the Columbia singles "All Night Desire" and "Fire in the City" are.

Order all three cds as a 3-pack directly from Collectors' Choice and receive an autographed "New Arrangement" booklet from Jackie!

January 20, 2009 Earworm

I don't know about the rest of you but I am beat. I've Obamarama'd myself into a tizzy and, for the moment, I fear only the hysteria hangover tomorrow. But there's plenty of time for that later and I'll be humming Jackie DeShannon's "Put A Little Love In Your Heart" as I drift off to sleep.

I'll probably be right back to my skeptical self tomorrow but until then...

October 16, 2008 Earworm

Growing weary of the slice and dice of post-debate polls, I re-adjusted the positions of three dogs and rolled over onto my side while wrestling up enough covers to cover my bottom. Encountering a face that I've watched change for sixteen years, I had the good fortunate to experience the sort of heart swelling feeling of appreciation that explains big sweeping ballads like Jackie DeShannon's version of "I Can Make It With You" and Claude Rains in "Mr. Skeffington".

And then a terrier twitched her tail and soiled the air.

But I still have Jackie, perhaps paying homage to her friend P.J. Proby, and what I consider the best version of "I Can Make It With You". Oh, and "Mr. Skeffington", too.

July 21, 2008 Earworm

After a maddening couple of hours fighting with Roxio and digging deeper into exe files than someone as clueless as I should ever dig, my digital world is back on track and I the finer things in life can be the focus before drifting off to sleep. Thankfully, the new P.J. Proby compilation has arrived and I can confirm that the good folks at EMI UK have done a fine job. The long awaited digital version of "Just Like Him" sounds gorgeous and forty-some year old 45s can now get a long deserved rest.

P.J.'s buddy, Jackie DeShannon, wrote "Just Like Him" just for him - maybe as consolation for losing the girl he stole from Elvis to Bob Colbert. For me, "Just Like Him" is a chance to play a variation of Barbie; dressing P.J. in various outfits and placing him in different settings where he can stroll forlornly with an occasional scanning of the heavens in search of answers never forthcoming. My favorite locale is on a beach in the fading hours of the boardwalk, giving him an opportunity to come upon a nearly deserted bandstand where he stops to watch couples dancing from sheer boredom. Clinging to each other out of desperation, their feet try to do right by that breath-taking string section that shines like the stars in the sky during the middle eight.

Jackie DeShannon was never short on lyrical romance and P.J. never passed up on drama and putting them together created cinematic fodder for my childish fantasies of happy endings. That I've had a crush on her for as long as I can remember and a bizarre fascination with him for nearly a decade allows me to widen the screen to Cinemascope proportions and saturate the color until their as vivid as the hope in P.J.'s final "...just like him" at the fade out.

Sticking around for the credits reminds me that major respect should be given to the somewhat unsung producer, Ron Richards, best known as the man who discovered The Hollies and as the probable producer of the LP version of "Love Me Do"; the pale faced English guy clearly stakes a claim in the beginnings of soul, both black and blue-eyed, with this record. Jack Nitzsche has been suspected of being the uncredited arranger and even though it doesn't quite fit anyone's travel schedule, the strings certainly fit Jack.

In the scrap heap of pop music should have beens lays "Baby, That's Me" by The Cake, the revered anti-success story of the combination of baroque psychedelic girl group pop. The usual story of mismanagement, wrong men, label politics, and more than a little drugs, apply to Eleanor Barooshian, Jeanette Jacobs, and Barbara Morillo but few stories result in a record as beautiful as their version of this Jackie DeShannon/Jack Nitzsche composition.

As recorded by Leslie Gore, "Baby, That's Me" is petulant at best. The Cake, however, deliver a performance that borders on disturbing in it's distance; as though the girls are delivering a psychotic Mystery Science Theater commentary on their own lives. Harold Battiste adds his special swamp voodoo to the arrangement, muddying the waters even more, and Cher pops in for uncredited background vocals.

Like so many good things, the general public missed the point and the record flopped. Fortunately for me, it showed up on a "gray area" Japanese import at the end of the eighties, giving me the opportunity to meet one of my most favorite records and now, the good folk at Rev-Ola have re-issued the entire, brief, Cake catalogue and even threw in the original mono single mix of "Baby, That's Me" so that those strings can be heard in all their morbid glory.

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.