Hit-maker pursued the blues

In the billing for his first Australian tour, American rocker Del Shannon was introduced as a 22-year-old “keen fisherman”. In truth he was almost 27 and married with two children.

Del Shannon Picture: Supplied

IN THE billing for his first Australian tour in November 1961, a Sydney magazine introduced the clean-cut American rocker with the wailing falsetto as a 22-year-old “keen fisherman”. At the time, the co-composer of My Little Runaway was almost 27 and married with two children.

Del Shannon was born Charles “Chuck” Westover 80 years ago, on December 30, 1934, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the eldest child of Bert and Leone. He grew up on a farm at nearby Coopersville, where his mother taught him to play a ukulele. He graduated to guitar-picking, imitating Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell, and bought his first guitar at 14.

A reluctant student and too small for the school football team, Westover’s guitar accompanied him to school classes and football games, when he played at half time. Regularly kicked out of class for strumming, his principal and mentor Russel Conran sent Westover to play in the boy’s locker room.

“That is where I learned all about bathroom acoustics,” Shannon later explained. “I would get this great echo sound.”

But music could not win him love: rejection at the hand of teen classmate Karen, who agreed to accompany Westover to their school prom only to dump him in favour of a rival two weeks before the event, was credited as inspiration for later hits, including Runaway.

After stints picking strawberries and driving a flower delivery truck, Westover was drafted into the US Army in 1954, when he married Shirley Nash. From Kentucky, he was posted to Stuttgart, Germany, for three years, where he joined an army radio program and an army band.

He returned to Battle Creek, Michigan, working at a furniture factory then as a carpet salesman when he joined up as rhythm guitarist with country-rockers the Moonlight Ramblers, performing at the Hi-Lo Club. Westover replaced sacked lead singer and guitarist Doug DeMott in 1958, retagging the group the Big Little Show Band and adopting the stage name Charlie Johnson.

His reluctant recruitment of organist and accordion player Max Crook, who in 1959 arrived for rehearsals carrying a black box synthesiser he called a Musitron, set a new direction. They wrote and recorded a string of works, including Living In Misery and I’m Blue Without You. Despite being the hottest band in town, the Big Little Show Band failed to secure a recording contract until Crook invited Ann Arbor disc jockey Ollie McLaughlin to visit.

McLaughlin left with reel-to-reel tapes which he played to Irving Micahnik and Harry Balk of EmBee Productions in Detroit. When the duo signed a recording contract in July 1960, Balk suggested they find new names.

Westover started with a Hi-Lo Club regular’s wrestling moniker, Mark Shannon, then derived Del from his favourite car, the Cadillac Coupe DeVille: “DeVille, Del, that’s where I got it from,” Shannon told a US interviewer. “Could you imagine ... being introduced: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Charles Westover!’ It had no ammunition.”

Subcontracted to Bigtop Records, Shannon was flown to New York to record The Search and I’ll Always Love you, which crashed when he was too nervous to perform a good take. McLaughlin’s encouragement to compose more up-tempo numbers produced One More Time and Daydreams. But it was a snippet of a song recorded over that caught McLaughlin’s attention. Shannon re-recorded his Runaway composition in Crook’s living room, but Balk did not initially share McLaughlin’s enthusiasm.

With Balk eventually convinced to give Shannon and Crook another chance, they drove 700 miles to New York where, although nervous and self-conscious about his lack of formal music training, Shannon recorded a runaway hit in three hours.

Bigtop Records released Runaway in February 1961. It immediately moved up the charts to sell 80,000 discs a day. Quitting the Hi-Lo Club, Shannon moved to New York and appeared on American Bandstand in April, sending Runaway to No. 1 on Billboard charts.

Micahnik handled Shannon’s biography, introducing him as an unattached, milk-drinking superstar. Wife Shirley was billed as his sister.

Shannon made the first of 13 Australian tours at the end of 1961, then appeared at the Rushcutters Bay tin shed venue, the Sydney Stadium, in promoter Lee Gordon’s “The Twist”, with Chubby Checker and Bobby Rydell.

On his last visit in 1989, Shannon recalled Sydney Stadium audiences, when “kids used to come up on the stage”, in a television interview with host Ray Martin. He also displayed yodelling skills from The Swiss Maid and rolling guitar rhythm of Little Town Flirt, both Australian hits.

Shannon, who admitted to battling booze and depression, was found dead in February, 1990.

Originally published as Hit-maker pursued the blues