Jackie De Shannon - Trust In Me (1969)

Singer and songwriter Jackie DeShannon has quite a musical legacy. Her early singles crafted doo wop to intelligent lyrics, and she toured with the Beatles in 1964 and more than held her own. She wrote songs with Randy Newman and Jimmy Page, sang with Van Morrison, and was among the first artists to realize that folk and pop could work together, and was a behind-the-scenes innovator in the creation of folk-rock. She started out singing country songs on a local radio show by the time she was six years old, and by the age of 11 she was hosting her own show on the station. She was already single-minded about a career in music, and after the family moved to Illinois, she continued to work at singing and songwriting, and recorded regional singles under various names as a teenager, including sides as Jackie Dee and Jackie Shannon. Her versions of a pair of country songs, 'Buddy' and 'Trouble', caught the ear of rocker Eddie Cochran, who sought her out and introduced her to his girlfriend, singer and songwriter Sharon Sheeley, and they began collaborating on songs such as 'I Love Anastasia', which was a hit for the Fleetwoods, and 'Dum Dum' for Brenda Lee. Sharon Lee Myers, as she then was, signed a recording contract with Liberty Records in 1960, and by this point she had grafted the names Jackie Dee and Jackie Shannon together to become known as Jackie DeShannon, and it was under that name that her debut single 'Lonely Girl' appeared later that year. Although she continued to release fine singles, including the Sonny Bono/Jack Nitzsche classic 'Needles And Pins' and her own 'When You Walk In The Room' (both songs were later big hits for the Searchers), she only had moderate success in the charts. Her biggest break came when she opened for the Beatles on the group’s first U.S. tour in 1964 with a band that included a young Ry Cooder, and that same year the Byrds covered her song 'Don’t Doubt Yourself Babe' on their debut album for Columbia Records, which only added to her visibility. She moved briefly to England in 1965, where she began writing songs with a pre-Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page, including 'Don’t Turn Your Back on Me' and 'Dream Boy', as well as penning 'Come And Stay With Me' for Marianne Faithfull, and when she moved back to New York she teamed up with a pre-fame Randy Newman to write 'Did He Call Today Mama?' and 'Hold Your Head High', among others. In 1965 she finally conquered the pop charts with her version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's 'What The World Needs Now Is Love', and two years later in 1967 she played a folksinger in the movie 'C'mon Let's Live A Little', where she starred alongside 60's hearth-throb Bobby Vee. 

Despite the eventual success of the single, she was a tough act to market, as she was obviously young and beautiful, but her natural intelligence made her seem out of place as a teen idol, and the singer/songwriter era was still a couple of years down the road. In 1967 she released the 'New Image' album, but the title was a misnomer, as it just consisted of pale cover versions, and her name only appeared on the credits of two of the tracks. 'For You' came out the same year, and was a bold experiment comprising 'standards' with orchestral arrangements, which was an idea borrowed more successfully by Linda Ronstadt some fifteen years later. 'Me About You' was released in early 1968, and was an excursion into soft rock, with songs by Tim Hardin and John Sebastian, alongside four of her own songs, but it was with 1968's 'Laurel Canyon' that she finally found her voice. Out went the well-groomed young female entertainer, to be replaced by the blonde hippie chick pictured sumptuously in a series of Sue Cameron photos on the album cover. The music was a revelation as well, with De Shannon contributing five songs, but picking others by Barry White, Paul Williams, Clapton/Bruce/Brown, and Robbie Robertson to accompany them, and employing a band that included Mac 'Dr. John' Rebennack, Barry White, Russ Titleman and Harold R. Battiste Jr., producing a loose, flowing sound, supporting her soulful voice in top form. Many of the songs celebrated Los Angeles, and particularly the Laurel Canyon area, as well as including her hit version of The Band's 'The Weight', and her own belated recording of the Marianne Faithful hit 'Come And Stay With Me'. Possibly because this was a new career path for her, she recorded way more tracks than were needed for the album, so that she could pick the best of them fr the final tracklisting, and a lot of them have since turned up on expanded re-issues. This companion album to 'Laurel Canyon' is made up of these out-takes, as well as a few in the same style from her follow-up album from the following year, and a non-album Christmas single that she released in 1969, and when you hear a great track like 'The Greener Side' you wonder how that could ever have been rejected. 

Track listing

01 Brighton Hill
02 Trust In Me
03 What Is This
04 Happy Go Lucky Girl
05 Ooh, You Did It Again!
06 What Was Your Day Like
07 Medley - Keep Me Hangin' On' / Hurt So Bad
08 Effervescent Blue
09 Mediterranean Sky
10 The Greener Side
11 Reason To Believe
12 Try A Little Harder
13 Children And Flowers
14 Christmas