JACKIE DE SHANNON & RY COODER 1963
I've had my attention drawn to a terrific website/resource called Wolfgang's Vault, which puts online some of the recordings & other items that seem to have belonged to the late Bill Graham, promoter extraordinaire whose heyday was the 1960s and 1970s. One of the most remarkable items - and you can hear it in full - is a club performance from September 1963 by the 19-year-old Jackie de Shannon accompanied by 16-year-old guitar prodigy Ry Cooder.
I've always admired some bits of Jackie de Shannon's work - her version of 'Needles and Pins' was incomparably better than the Searchers', as was her original recordings of her own composition 'When You Walk In The Room', which the Searchers also covered in enfeebled form.
On this 1963 performance from the Ash Grove in Los Angeles, there are a number of songs included which hold an interest for Dylan afficionados, but the one that strikes me most is Ms de Shannon's version of Rabbit Brown's sublime 'James Alley Blues'. I'd have thought this was uncoverable. She does it superbly well.
The whole thing is here but here is 'James Alley Blues':
posted by Michael Gray | 1:21 pm
2 Comments:
I meant to add, re her other work, that I used to have an EP by her from the mid-60s that included an intelligent, beautifully husky version of Dylan's 'Walkin' Down The Line'. (Earlier she'd worked in songwriting partnership with Eddie Cochran's fiancee Sharon Sheeley; later she wrote, among much else, 'Bette Davis Eyes'. I wonder if that last phrase came to her after she'd been listening to "Bette Davis style" inside 'Desolation Row'.)
Thanks for posting this. It is indeed a lovely rendition of 'James Alley Blues' – and all the more impressive given that she was only nineteen at the time.
'When You Walk In The Room' was only a year later, but – yes – she sounds so much younger then. It is of course effortlessly superior to the Searchers' version, but it's at least possible to listen to that without cringing, which can't be said for Paul Carrack's and Springsteen's overblown interpretations.
Post a Comment
<< Home