Hit songwriter’s first two UK albums as a performer

Though Kentucky-born Jackie DeShannon had two major chart hits, a chart-topping 1965 version of Bacharach and David’s “What the World Needs Now is Love” and the 1969 original “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” her work as a songwriter has commercially overshadowed her performing. The author of “Dum Dum,” “When You Walk in the Room,” “Come and Stay,” “Breakaway,” and “Bette Davis Eyes” has been represented on the charts for four decades, turning up on countless artist’s albums and greatest hits collections, but her own catalog of performances has had a difficult time gaining CD reissue.

A number of single-disc anthologies, including the Definitive Collection, Ultimate Jackie DeShannon, Come and Get Me and High Coinage have offered good overviews, but only in the past few years have her original albums found their way into the digital domain. This two-fer from BGO combines DeShannon’s first pair of British LPs, opening with the sensational rock sounds of 1964’s Don’t Turn Your Back On Me, and continuing with the more centrist orchestrations of 1965’s This is Jackie DeShannon. The jump from the debut’s pop, rock and folk-rock works to the industry productions of the sophomore release is stark, to say the least, and though the former is the more satisfying spin, the latter holds several charming works.

Don’t Turn Your Back On Me relies on Brill Building styled arrangements (courtesy of Phil Spector’s main man, Jack Nitzsche), with light violins adorning tracks powered by full-kit drumming, deep tympani, driving 12-string guitars and vocals that are both R&B rough and girl-group sweet. DeShannon’s original take of Nitzsche and Sonny Bono’s “Needles and Pins” is sung downbeat, making the vocal more tearfully bitter than the Searchers’ spitefully anxious hit cover. The mood recovers by song’s end, however, with DeShannon singing sassily across the beat and flinging away her pain.

Additional tunes from Jack Nitzsche (the girl-group “Should I Cry”) and Randy Newman (the stagey ballad “She Don’t Understand Him Like I Do,” the Lesley Gore styled “Hold Your Head High,” and the girl-group “Did He Call Today, Mama”), are complemented by DeShannon’s original version of her own “When You Walk in the Room.” The latter, taken again at a slower tempo than the Searchers’ hit cover, has an edgier vocal and wields the lyrical beat like a hammer. DeShannon’s voice turns to a Brenda Lee styled growl on “The Prince,” the 1950s R&B tune “It’s Love Baby (24 Hours a Day)” provides a fine 1960s rave-up, and her cover of “Oh Boy” charts the transition from Buddy Holly’s reign to the Beatles then-current dominance.

The two-fer arrangement of this CD finds the last track of Don’t Turn Your Back On Me, a rousing cover of Allen Toussaint’s “Over You” segueing into the muted brass introduction of “What the World Needs Now is Love,” which opens This is Jackie DeShannon. It’s a segue that was really meant to be heard with a year’s gap in between. With the rock drums and guitars stripped away and the arrangements turned to sweeping orchestrations, DeShannon still shines on covers of Gershwin’s “Summertime” and Bacharach and David’s “A Lifetime of Loneliness,” but mostly without the electricity of her earlier sides. The originals “Am I Making It Hard on You,” “Hellos and Goodbyes” and “I Remember the Boy” sound as if they were recorded during the sessions of the previous album.

“What the World Needs Now is Love” fit DeShannon like a glove, but the attempts to replicate its orchestrated formula weren’t as successful. In contrast, the album cuts on Don’t Turn Your Back On Me are enjoyable, if not hit single quality, as are the rock performances grafted on to This is Jackie DeShannon. This is a fine two-fer, though more for the debut than the follow-up, though even the latter has a number of cuts that will find space in your regular rotation. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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