RUNAWAY - The Del Shannon Story

Brian C. Young

Description

RUNAWAY is a fascinating account of the life and music of 60s rock star Del Shannon. From humble beginnings in the rural Midwest, this bar band guitarist rocketed to overnight superstar status when his first big hit clinched the #1 spot on the American Billboard charts, resulting in an international hit in over 20 other countries during the year 1961.
Del Shannon soon followed up “Runaway” with more hits, including “Hats Off To Larry,” “So Long Baby,” “Hey! Little Girl,” “The Swiss Maid,” “Little Town Flirt,” “Two Kinds of Teardrops,” “Handy Man,” “Do You Wanna Dance,” “Keep Searchin’,” and “Stranger In Town.” Shannon was the first American artist to cover a Beatles song in “From Me To You.”
In the late 60s and early 70s, he shifted his focus into production, launching the career of country artist Johnny Carver, discovering a group called Smith that saw a #3 hit with a Shannon-Smith arrangement of “Baby It’s You,” and produced fellow contemporary Brian Hyland’s Top 5 hit “Gypsy Woman.”

Del worked with Jeff Lynne and Dave Edmunds in the 70s, with Tom Petty seeking him out to produce Shannon’s comeback album in 1981, resulting in a #33 hit “Sea of Love” in America.

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Autobiography
• Music

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 30 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798369401477
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

RUNAWAY
 
The Del Shannon Story
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Brian C. Young
 
 
Copyright © 2023 by Brian C. Young.
 

Library of Congress Control Number:
2023911548
ISBN:
Softcover
979-8-3694-0148-4
 
eBook
979-8-3694-0147-7
 
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Rev. date: 06/29/2023
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
853958
CONTENTS
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgments
1934 - 1948
1949 - 1953
1954 - 1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992 - 1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001 - 2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008 – 2010
2011
2012
2013 – 2016
2017
2018 - 2019
2020 - 2021
2022
2023
Endnotes and Bibliography
Del Shannon Sessionography
Discography
Del Shannon Sound-Alikes (“So why did you have to sound like me for?”)
Song Lyrics and Publishing
DEDICATION
I would like to dedicate this book to the following individuals for their inspiration and support over the course of many years in seeing this project executed: To my family, for their understanding. To the Westover family as a whole, for being gracious and open. To Dan Bourgoise, you are my music mentor and a voice of reason. To James Popenhagen, you are like a brother to me. We’ve shared many events together on this journey. To Dennis DeWitt and Howard DeWitt, thank you for showing me the ropes! To Del’s fans, you are simply the best!
PREFACE
This book is first and foremost an attempt to capture and encapsulate the musical career of singer-songwriter Del Shannon. The journey for me in writing this has been a long one, spanning at least 30 years in just researching alone. Yes, it took just as long to research and write the story of Del Shannon as his musical career had lasted … about 30 years.
To all the fans, friends, musical associates and family of Charles Westover / Del Shannon, I apologise up front for the length of time in being able to get this book executed. Marriage and raising a family put this book’s writing on the sidelines, but it was always in the back of my mind. It is a better book today because of the long delay. However, my only regret is that we’ve lost so many of the crucial people in recent years that were a part of Del Shannon’s story, and they didn’t get the chance to read this. But they lived it! So here’s to ya!!!
The glaring issue that I had in writing this book was that there was too much information that I had collected and amassed over the years, to be able to figure out just how to lay this book out. Running Del Shannon’s fan club since the early 1990’s has been a blessing. To all the fans who’ve sent in newspaper clippings, magazine articles, tapes, radio surveys and posters, and other oddball items, at a time before the internet, really helped to make this book possible in the sense of building up a good base from which to draw initial research information from.
Growing up in the state of Washington, I was fortunate enough to meet a fellow Del Shannon fanatic right in my own backyard. A chance meeting with Dennis DeWitt, from the Seattle area, became the catalyst for writing this book. Dennis and his brother, Howard DeWitt, were huge rockabilly and rock ‘n roll fans in general, and wrote for a magazine called Blue Suede News . Having seen that March 1990 issue that featured several articles on Del Shannon after his untimely death, Dennis and I met up at his home in North Seattle. We were both stunned at the amount of Del Shannon material and memorabilia we each had, and literally were able to double each other’s collections overnight (well … the cassette dubbing sessions probably took about a week or two, and we spent about a whole day holed up at a Kinko’s copy center printing off photocopies of “everything Del,” but you catch my drift). That chance meeting amplified the both of us in a journey to seek out “what went wrong” in the life of a successful singer who was enjoying a new peak in his career when it all suddenly ended on a sad February eve. Although Dennis and I hadn’t met yet, we had both caught Del in concert at the Washington State Fair in Puyallup on September 8, 1989, literally five months to the day before his death. Shannon looked great! Backed by The Monte Carlos that night, his show was impressive and the sound was top-notch.
 
Del Shannon playing the Washington State Fair in Puyallup 1989
Dennis and his brother had already elected to write a book on the career of Del Shannon, and had begun the interview process starting with the locals of Battle Creek, using Dick Schlatter there as their point of contact and glorified tour guide. I, on the other hand, having run Del’s fan club, the American branch of the Del Shannon Appreciation Society, helped to garner a relationship with Shannon’s manager, Dan Bourgoise, and his staff at Bug Music. Dan, in turn, helped immensely with opening doors and getting us in touch with Del’s family and music contacts. This all led up to several trips to Michigan and California for research purposes, but it wasn’t until March of 1997 that the true breakthrough occurred. A week-long series of extensive interviews with Del’s family, manager, early producer, music associates, and close friends, really helped in truly seeing the full scope of both Del Shannon’s life and the music he left behind.
Due to the sheer volume of material sourced to be able to work from, the only way that I could deem organizing everything was to do so chronologically. Thus began the long process of sorting the materials into boxes labelled “50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.” From there, the material was broken down by year. It was a very tediuous task, but in doing so it allowed me to write this book as a “Del Shannon day-by-day” of sorts, for lack of a better term. In doing so though, it does make this book in spots feel more biographical or analytical, until it reaches a point where an anecdote or funny story may occur. I make no excuses for this, and have chosen not to delete these spurts of fact-telling because of their historical importance. A day-by-day following of Shannon’s career here helps to document everything that he’s done, giving the reader a point of reference and a guide during the process of the singer’s growth, beginning with where he came from, and leading into his formative years in how he began his musical journey. This book stands as an encyclopedic account of Del’s career and lifespan, from which future writers or researchers can source from.
To cement Del’s work in history so that it is not forgotten in years and generations to come was a concern of mine. I did not want to see my pop hero’s music and legacy fade into the abyss. Shannon was an underdog, which was one of the things that made his story so attractive to me. He wasn’t born with the good looks of Elvis, or blessed to be a member of a break-through band like the Beatles, but he was able to kick and crawl and climb his way up to reach the stardom and attention he was eagerly looking for while picking strawberries in a rural Midwest town as a boy.
When and if at all possible, more than one source was interviewed (or if in print, drawn from) in order to find and build on a story around an event, gig, or the writing of a song. In writing this book, I have found that each individual has their own “version of the truth,” or the way in their mind that the event or happenstance occurred. Some of those best examples would be in the writing, recording, and release of the smash hit “Runaway.” Del’s versions of how the song came to be are down on tape for all to hear. Aside from Shannon’s own perspective, being able to hear from Shirley Westover how she wrote down the lyrics on paper as Del strummed through the song, or how it came together on stage at the Hi-Lo Club from organist Max Crook and drummer Dick Parker, to the drive to New York and the recording of the song seen through the eyes of the co-writers’ wives, Joann Crook and Shirley Westover, how it was arranged and mixed from the arranger Bill Ramal and producer Harry Balk, to the session guitar players, Bucky Pizzarelli and Al Casamenti, to the release of the single by Bigtop label-head Johnny Bienstock, the story of “Runaway” became well-rounded. Each person added another layer or perspective, with little factoid side-stories such as Joann Crook becoming a contestant on Beat The Clock while waiting for her husband to finish his recording session, or that both Shirley and Joann had children born on the same day nine months after the “Runaway” recording session. Those trivial little happenings give the story more depth and realism.
As this book took shape in a basic outline form, some glaring holes in the story needed to be filled. Rather than bullshit through a timeline to connect the