Say the name Jackie DeShannon and two things spring to most listeners’ minds. “A lot of people think I popped out of nowhere singing What the World Needs Now is Love and Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” DeShannon said of her two biggest hits. “They don’t know there’s a history there.”
In fact, there’s an incredibly long and varied one. As a singer and songwriter, DeShannon has seminal connections to many of the most important musical forces of the last century, including Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Page and the Wrecking Crew. Her musical output also spreads far and wide, spanning genres from soul to folk-rock to standards, heard on scores of solo albums and in a wealth of cover versions of songs she has written. But there’s even more to DeShannon’s story, including a formative part that even her most ardent fans never had access to – until now.
