Though widely recognized for delivering a string of memorable pop successes as a singer during the 1960s, among them the 1965 recording “What the World Needs Now Is Love” and the 1969 single “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” Jackie DeShannon’s accomplishments reach well beyond the stage. A skilled composer as well, she supplied chart material to the Byrds, the Searchers, Irma Thomas, and Kim Carnes while also partnering with Randy Newman and Jimmy Page. An early advocate of folk-rock, she joined the Beatles on tour, shared bills with Ry Cooder and Van Morrison, and proved one of the few 1960s hitmakers who adapted seamlessly to the 1970s. Her untitled 1963 debut offered an early model of folk material shaped by crisp rock production, and by the sessions for 1965’s You Won’t Forget Me she had filled the track list with her own material—an uncommon achievement for any female performer of the period. Throughout the 1970s she matured into a polished recording artist whose strongest work, including the 1973 album Jackie, stood comfortably alongside that of Carole King and Joni Mitchell; even after moving toward adult-contemporary textures on 1977’s You’re The Only Dancer she retained her reputation as a discerning vocalist, an inventive songwriter, and a performer who brought intelligence and discernment to the mainstream.
Sharon Lee Meyers entered the world in Hazel, Kentucky, on August 21, 1941. By age six she was already performing country numbers on a local radio broadcast; at eleven she hosted her own program on the same station and displayed an unwavering focus on a musical future. After the family relocated to Illinois, she kept developing her singing and songwriting skills, cutting regional singles under several stage names, among them Jackie Dee and Jackie Shannon. A pair of country sides titled “Buddy” and “Trouble” attracted the attention of Eddie Cochran, who contacted her and introduced her to his girlfriend, the singer and songwriter Sharon Sheeley. The two women soon began collaborating, producing “I Love Anastasia,” a hit for the Fleetwoods, and “Dum Dum,” a hit for Brenda Lee.
In 1960 Myers secured a contract with Liberty Records. Having merged the names Jackie Dee and Jackie Shannon into Jackie DeShannon, she issued her first single under the new identity, “Lonely Girl,” later that year. Although she continued to release strong singles—including the Sonny Bono/Jack Nitzsche composition “Needles and Pins” and her own “When You Walk in the Room,” which fused folk-rock with a Phil Spector-style Wall of Sound arrangement, both later successes for the Searchers—her own chart progress remained modest. Her profile rose sharply when she opened for the Beatles on their inaugural U.S. tour in 1964, backed by a band that featured a young Ry Cooder. That same year the Byrds included her song “Don’t Doubt Yourself Babe” on their Columbia debut, further raising her visibility. The following year she spent time in England, writing with a pre-Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page—long rumored to have inspired “Tangerine” on Led Zeppelin’s third album—on such numbers as “Don’t Turn Your Back on Me” and “Dream Boy.” Quickly establishing herself among top songwriters, she also wrote “Come and Stay with Me” for Marianne Faithfull, who scored a transatlantic hit with it. After moving to New York she began collaborating with a still-unknown Randy Newman on pieces including “Did He Call Today Mama?” and “Hold Your Head High.” In 1965 she finally reached the top of the pop charts with her reading of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” and in 1967 she portrayed a folksinger in the film C’mon Let’s Live a Little alongside Bobby Vee.
Difficult to categorize, DeShannon straddled the fading teen-idol era and the emerging singer-songwriter movement. She remained active as a writer, however, and returned to the charts in 1969 with her own “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” followed by the nearly as successful “Love Will Find a Way.” After relocating to Los Angeles she signed with Atlantic in 1970; though albums such as Jackie and Your Baby Is a Lady earned critical praise, they did not achieve widespread commercial success. Industry respect remained high, and Van Morrison invited her to supply backing vocals on his 1973 album Hard Nose the Highway. Even without constant mainstream exposure, DeShannon continued to place songs with other artists: “Bette Davis Eyes,” co-written with Donna Weiss, became a major hit for Kim Carnes in 1981; “Break-A-Way,” first recorded by Irma Thomas in 1964, resurfaced as a success for Tracey Ullman in 1983; “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” re-charted in 1989 as a duet by Al Green and Annie Lennox and again in 1993 for Dolly Parton; and Pam Tillis took “When You Walk in the Room” to number one on the country chart in 1994. Additional artists who have recorded her material include Bruce Springsteen, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson, and Cher.
DeShannon re-emerged in 2000 with the well-received You Know Me, though the album again found only a modest audience. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010, and the following year issued When You Walk in the Room, a collection of acoustic reinterpretations of eleven signature songs. In 2023 two archival releases appeared: Little Bit of Heaven: The 1964 Metric Music Demos gathered thirty-one previously unreleased songwriting demos recorded for her publisher, while The Sherry Lee Show preserved radio air-checks of the teenage performer singing country material on WMRO-AM in Aurora, Illinois, during 1956 and 1957.
