Del Shannon (December 30, 1934 — February 8, 1990) was born Charles Weedon Westover in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He grew up in Coopersville, a small farming community near Grand Rapids. There he learned ukulele and later guitar, and listened to country and western music, including Hank Williams, Hank Snow, and Lefty Frizzell.
In 1954, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, and while in Germany played guitar in a band called the Cool Flames. When his army service ended, he returned to Battle Creek, Michigan and worked in a furniture factory, as a truck driver, and selling carpets. He also found part-time work as a rhythm guitarist in singer Doug DeMott's group, working at the Hi-Lo Club. When DeMott was fired in 1958, Westover took over as band leader and singer, giving himself the stage name Charlie Johnson, and renaming his band the Big Little Show Band. In early 1959 he added keyboardist Max Crook, with his invention the Musitron, an early synthesizer, to the group. Crook had already made recordings, and persuaded Ann Arbor disc jockey Ollie McLaughlin to hear the band. In turn,
McLaughlin took the group's demos to Harry Balk and Irving Micahnik of Talent Artists, Inc. in Detroit. In July 1960, Westover and Crook signed a contract to become recording artists and composers, recording for the Big Top label. Balk suggested that Westover use a new stage name, and they came up with "Del Shannon", combining a friend's assumed surname with "Del" from his favorite make of car, the Cadillac Coupe de Ville. He was immediately flown to New York City, but his first sessions did not produce results. However, McLaughlin persuaded Shannon and Crook to rewrite and re-record one of their earlier songs, originally called "Little Runaway", using the Musitron as the lead instrument.
On January 21st, 1961, they recorded "Runaway", which was released as a single in February 1961. It immediately climbed the charts, reaching #1 in the Billboard charts in April. Shannon followed his first hit with "Hats Off to Larry", which peaked at #5 (Billboard) and #1,on Cashbox, and the less popular "So Long, Baby," another song of breakup bitterness. Both "Runaway" and "Hats Off to Larry" were recorded in a single day. "Little Town Flirt", released in 1962, also reached #12 in 1963, as did the album of the same name. After these hits, Shannon was unable to keep his momentum in the U.S., but continued his run of success in England, where he had always been more popular.
In 1963, he became the first American artist to record a cover version of a Beatles song. It was with "From Me to You", which charted in the US before the Beatles first ever hit. Shannon returned to the charts in 1964, with "Handy Man" (a 1960 hit by Jimmy Jones), "Do You Wanna Dance" (a 1958 hit by Bobby Freeman), and two more originals "Keep Searchin'" (#3 in the UK; #9 in the US) and this single was to be Shannon's final Top 10 hit in both countries in early '65, and "Stranger in Town" (1965), both themed about flight from pursuit in a dangerous world.
Shannon opened with Ike and Tina Turner at Dave Hull's Hullabaloo, in Los Angeles, California, on December 22, 1965. The teen-age nightclub was formerly named Moulin Rouge. A 1966 chart offering was Shannon's cover of the Rolling Stones' "Under My Thumb". Peter and Gordon released the Shannon composition, "I Go To Pieces," in 1966.
In the late 1960s, after a dry spell of hits, he turned to production. In 1969, he discovered a group called Smith and arranged their hit "Baby, It's You," which had previously been a smash hit for the Shirelles in 1963. He then produced his friend Brian Hyland's million seller "Gypsy Woman," a cover of Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions' original, in 1970. "Crocodile Rock" 1973 by Elton John was an update of the Runaway sound.
Tags: pop rock
