Del Shannon, "Show Me" c/w "Never Thought I Could," Liberty 55894 (rel. 6/1966)

 

With its gritty minor-key melody, the futuristic sound of an early electronic keyboard and a commanding vocal by its composer, Del Shannon's "Runaway" is one of the masterpieces of early 1960s pop music. A #1 hit in 1961, it got a new musical career off and running. Shannon had 16 Hot 100 hits from '61 to '66, when he moved to Liberty Records and began to work in Los Angeles.
        Among Shannon's accomplishments was the first American cover version of a Beatles song, "From Me to You," which out-performed the original (issued by Chicago's Vee-Jay Records) in the summer of 1963. (The Beatles had some mild success in America that year; they weren't complete unknowns when they arrived in February '64.) His original songs are the meat and potatoes of his discography; he had a hit with a revival of Jimmy Jones' "Handy Man" and Bobby Freeman's "Do You Want to Dance," both pop hits in Beatle-crazed '64. Better yet were a pair of sinister story-songs, "Keep Searchin'" and "Stranger in Town," which charted at #9 and 30.
        Shannon's music was self-contained; producers Harry Balk and Irving Micahnik leased their recordings to record labels. Shannon fell out with these two music hustlers in 1963 and continued this lease pattern into 1965. When he signed with Liberty Records in 1965, UK pop duet Peter and Gordon had a global his with Shannon's song "I Go To Pieces;" Shannon was poised for a major comeback. In theory.
    Liberty had Shannon record cover versions of other performer's hits and underplayed his essential appeal: he was best when singing his own songs, which influenced many of the British musicians who now basked in fame. Shannon was an important link between the 1950s rockers and the 1960s British invaders. Like Roy Orbison, he was a top example of homegrown talent with international appeal.
        None of Shannon's Liberty singles were successful. The label is to blame: why would a performer opt to record current songs like The Monkees' "She" and The Box Tops' "The Letter" when they had their own solid material? Liberty clung to the outdated notion that the song, not the singer, was most important. 
     In the 1950s, the song was king, and a hot tune might have eight to ten competing versions. That business model was kaput by 1966, but some labels clung to the past in a business that traded on the present and the future. Thus, many excellent songs went unheard in their first go-'round.
        One tragedy in Shannon's career was the unissued LP he recorded in England with producer Andrew Loog Oldham. To be called Home and Away, it featured songs by UK pop wunderkind Billy Nichols and several new Shannon originals. Its elegant baroque pop production was as up-to-date as Shannon's retrograde US singles were stale. The haunting "Led Along" was issued on a US Liberty single in March 1967. This seems, in hindsight, a promotional must: Rolling Stones producer resurrects iconic US artist. The single is so obscure Wikipedia doesn't list it in their Shannon discography.
        A year before, Shannon had one outstanding release on Liberty: two originals with fine arrangements by Leon Russell, who co-produced with Snuff Garrett, mastermind of Bobby Vee's Liberty recordings. This was a far cry from the pop trifles of that fellow Midwesterner. They connect with Shannon's earlier material but show it in sync with current pop trends.
      "Show Me" is close to Shannon's 1963-4 material: minor-key, driving melody, emotional anguish in its every word, wild falsetto and unusual-sounding lead instrument (in this case, guitars run through some au courant effects pedals). This big-sounding plea for romantic fidelity reminds a bit of The Rolling Stones' "Tell Me" mixed with a handful of John Lennon songs for The Beatles. Both bands counted Shannon among their influences (tho' The Stones would never come out and admit such a thing). With a big, radio-friendly sound, this single had a sound to please the singer's fans and, perhaps, win him some new friends. You know what happened...

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/j88u7ti7131lwo7ieibi8/2086a.mp3?rlkey=8jcqoytdjitiaa1568k6pra8n&st=adcv2oc4&dl=0

Cash Box's word-salad prose style sobered up in 1966; perhaps a change of editors was the culprit. This positive review of today's record avoids all jargon.
It's almost disappointing.

On the flip, "Never Thought I Could" was the second appearance of a moody song that sounds like a much more authentic and rootsy version of The Byrds' repertoire. It's close to the songs of that group's gifted, troubled songwriter Gene Clark. The song went out on the B-side of Shannon's first Liberty 45 under its first title, "I've Got it Bad (And That Ain't Good)." I presume someone mentioned the Duke Ellington jazz classic with the same title, and Shannon picked another phrase from his lyric for this second go-'round. 
     The song's melody shows Shannon willing to explore something more ambitious. Had Liberty realized the worth of his original material, he might have had more success on the pop charts. In his two years with Liberty, alongside other lost opportunities, he made the pop-psych LP The Further Adventures of Charles Westover, an excellent album that died upon release and is now a sought-after, big-ticket item for collectors. Didn't do Del any good in 1968, as it went straight to the cut-out bins.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1fit9k8hsghnn6jskhs50/2086b.mp3?rlkey=hwnltzcrebohuzhg26hzv3f34&st=rha1ztzq&dl=0

       One of the first CDs I ever purchased was a 1991 EMI compilation of Del Shannon's Liberty material. The Liberty Years, part one of an intended series, omits the junk that filled his LPs and focuses on the more innovative original material that few people noticed or heard when new. Long out of print, it's worth tracking down as another example of the clueless nature of record company execs.
        Shannon was a survivor, and managed a late-career hit with a revival of Phil Phillips' 1959 classic "Sea of Love," a track from an LP produced by fan-turned-star Tom Petty. Drop Down and Get Me got onto the Billboard album charts in 1981 and remains the performer's easiest-to-find LP.
        Around this time, Shannon re-recorded "Runaway" with new lyrics for the network TV series Crime Story. This was followed with Rock On!, released posthumously in 1991 and co-produced by Petty and Jeff Lynne. The latter feels dated by Lynne's Plexiglass pop sound, in which things are all too perfect and not human enough, but the 1989 sessions were, I hope, fun for all parties involved to make. It was Shannon's last recording; he committed suicide in 1990 after a long bout of depression. It was a grisly end to a man whose songs had a haunted, Midwestern darkness to them.
        Home And Away was included on Bear Family Records' exhaustive boxed set of Shannon's music. It received a stand-alone release by EMI in 2006, which included some alternate takes and mixes but was faithful to the intended 1967 release's sound.

Tomorrow: The Zombies, another group who suffered under a clueless record label, with a US-only 1965 single guaranteed to not become a hit. No slight to its quality; it's just a bit...dark.