I saw her today
I saw her face
It was a face I loved
“Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” is a game in which one movie fan challenges another to find the shortest path between a particular film star and Kevin Bacon, who has appeared in over 70 feature films in his 40-year movie career.
The game is based on the “six degrees of separation” concept, which theorizes that any two people on Earth are no more than six acquaintance links apart.
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| Kevin Bacon |
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If you wanted to translate “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” into a game about pop music connections, you could do a lot worse than “Six Degrees of Jackie DeShannon.”
DeShannon recorded only two singles that cracked the top 40 in the United States, but she has direct connections to a very large and very diverse group of well-known musicians.
Forget six degrees of separation – here’s a list of 20-odd prominent musicians or musical groups who are one degree of separation from Jackie DeShannon:
ABBA
Burt Bacharach
Beatles
Sonny Bono
Delaney Bramlett
Byrds
Kim Carnes
Cher
Ry Cooder
Bob Dylan
Marianne Faithful
Al Green
Brenda Lee
Annie Lennox
Van Morrison
Randy Newman
Jimmy Page
Dolly Parton
Elvis Presley
Irma Thomas
Bobby Vee
Bobby Vinton
Most of those I’ve listed – including ABBA, Delaney Bramlett, the Byrds, Kim Carnes, Cher, Marianne Faithful, Al Green, Brenda Lee, Annie Lennox, Dolly Parton, and Irma Thomas – recorded songs that Jackie wrote.
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| Jackie DeShannon |
A few of them – like Burt Bacharach, Sonny Bono, and Bob Dylan – wrote songs that she recorded.
Jackie was romantically involved with Elvis Presley and Jimmy Page. (Think about that – can you name two superstars of that era who were less alike?)
As for the rest, Jackie opened for the Beatles on their first U.S. tour, formed a band with Ry Cooder, sang backup on a Van Morrison album, co-wrote songs with Randy Newman, and starred in movies with Bobby Vee and Bobby Vinton.
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Jackie DeShannon was born Sharon Lee Meyers in Hazel, Kentucky in 1941. By the time she was six years old, she was singing on the local country music radio station.
By the time she was 15, she had her own Saturday morning radio show and was appearing on television and performing live in the Chicago area (where her family had moved). It’s no wonder she dropped out of high school after her sophomore year.
She performed with Alan Freed’s “Big Rock ’n’ Roll Show” in Philadelphia and New York City before her 16th birthday, and began to record C&W and rockabilly records under a variety of pseudonyms – including Sherry Lee, Jackie Dee, and Jackie Shannon.
In 1960, she signed a contract with Liberty Records and started recording as Jackie DeShannon – which was supposedly the name of an Irish ancestor of hers.
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Jackie DeShannon was anything but an overnight success. After she released 14 singles that failed to crack the Billboard “Hot 100,” she finally got off the schneid – sort of – with a cover of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys’ “Faded Love,” which made it all the way to #97 in 1962.
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| “Needles and Pins” went to #1 in Canada, but peaked at only #84 in the U.S. |
After a dozen more unsuccessful singles, she released her most successful record, “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” which made it to #4 on the “Hot 100” in 1969.
DeShannon put out another 20 or so singles in the seventies, but none of them were hits.
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Click here to listen Jackie DeShannon’s 1963 recording of the Sonny Bono-Jack Nitzsche song, “Needles and Pins,” which barely squeezed into the “Hot 100” in the U.S. but was a #1 hit in Canada. (The song was a hit for the Merseybeat group, the Searchers, the following year.)
Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:
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