Jackie DeShannon – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Kim Carnes – Bette Davis Eyes ….Under the Covers Tuesday

More than any other song to that time…this one seemed so different and I knew music was changing in the 80s. I still liked it and I bought the single. Just like with Bonnie Tyler and It’s A Heartache…my first thought when hearing this was Rod Stewart. I really like Carne’s raspy voice more than the pop singers at the time…and now. Now I’d love to hear a duet with Kim Carnes and Bonnie Tyler.

“Bette Davis Eyes” was originally recorded by Jackie DeShannon on her 1975 album New Arrangement. DeShannon wrote the song with the songwriter Donna Weiss. According to DeShannon, she got the idea after watching the 1942 Bette Davis movie Now Voyager. It was Donna Weiss who submitted the demo to Carnes, who along with her band and producer Val Garay, came up with the hit arrangement for the song.

With Bette Davis Eyes a major hit in 1981, the then 73-year-old Bette Davis wrote to Carnes, DeShannon, and Weiss to thank them for making her cool in the eyes of her granddaughter. She also thanked them for making her part of modern history. Carnes later performed the song for Davis live as part of a tribute to the actress. The two remained friends until Davis’ death in 1989. Joan Crawford was long gone by this time…I have to wonder what she would have thought or said?

The producer told the drummer to go out and buy the cheapest drum set he could buy (and you can tell). They ran the drums through a synthesizer called a Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 and it gave a thin-sounding drum sound. At the time it was different but it would soon become commonplace to replace drum sets altogether with electronic drums…which to me… went way too far. That is why some recordings from that period sound so dated…but that is just me. Keyboardist Bill Cuomo made significant contributions to the chord changes and arrangement, as well as coming up with that synth riff.

Kim Carnes’ version of Bette Davis Eyes came out in 1981. It was the lead single from her sixth studio album, Mistaken Identity. And despite being released at the start of the decade, it was a song that would be played throughout the 80s on radios everywhere.

DeShannon is a Kentucky-born singer-songwriter who’s been on the music scene for most of her life. She started singing regularly on the radio at the age of six and some of her biggest hits include What the World Needs Now is Love and Put a Little Love in Your Heart.

The song peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, #2 in Canada, #2 in New Zealand, and #10 in the UK in 1981.

Jackie DeShannon: Donna Weiss and I were writing quite a bit at the time, and we both liked black-and-white movies. Donna had written many pages, and I was fooling around with the melody, and we pieced together ‘Bette Davis Eyes.

We made a demo with a much more rock-and-roll feel. That’s what I thought we were going to do, but the producer had another concept. It turned out OK. I don’t dislike it, but it was not my concept. It had been out a long time, and Donna gave it to Kim Carnes with something else on the tape. Kim liked it and that was that. Her version was much closer to the demo version.

Bette Davis Eyes

Her hair is Harlow gold
Her lips are sweet surprise
Her hands are never cold
She got Bette Davis eyes
She’ll turn the music on you
You won’t have to think twice
She’s pure as New York snow
She got Bette Davis eyes

And she’ll tease you, she’ll unease you
All the better just to please you
She’s precocious, and she knows just
What it takes to make a pro blush
She got Greta Garbo’s standoff sighs, she’s got Bette Davis eyes

She’ll let you take her home
It whets her appetite
She’ll lay you on the throne
She got Bette Davis eyes
She’ll take a tumble on you
Roll you like you were dice
Until you come out blue
She’s got Bette Davis eyes

She’ll expose you, when she snows you
Off your feet with the crumbs she throws you
She’s ferocious and she knows just
What it takes to make a pro blush
All the boys think she’s a spy, she’s got Bette Davis eyes

She’ll tease you, she’ll unease you
All the better just to please you
She’s precocious, and she knows just
What it takes to make a pro blush
All the boys think she’s a spy, she’s got Bette Davis eyes

She’ll tease you
She’ll unease you
Just to please you
She’s got Bette Davis eyes
She’ll expose you
When she snows you
‘Cause she knows you, she’s got Bette Davis Eyes

…

Ricky Nelson – Poor Little Fool

I just had a Ricky Nelson song not long ago…sue me…I’ve been listening to him a lot lately.

“Poor Little Fool” was written by 17-year-old Sharon Sheeley when she was still attending high school in Newport Beach, California. Female songwriters were rare at the time, and when the song climbed to #1 in the US, she became the first woman to compose an American chart-topper on her own.

Sharon Sheeley was engaged to Eddie Cochran and was involved in the car wreck that killed Cochran and injured Gene Vincent. Sheeley suffered a broken pelvis, Vincent broke his ribs and collarbone and added further damage to his already weak leg.

Sheeley later collaborated with Jackie DeShannon on hits for artists like Brenda Lee, and Irma Thomas. Sheeley and DeShannon were the first female writing team to have significant success in the pop realm. She died in 2002 at the age of 62 of complications following a cerebral hemorrhage.

Ricky Nelson didn’t hear hit potential in this song, but his father, the popular bandleader Ozzie Nelson, did. Ozzie convinced Ricky’s label, Imperial Records, to issue it as a single, but Ricky refused to approve a photo for the cover and wouldn’t perform it on the family TV show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Ozzie’s instincts were correct. Father knew best in this instance.

Poor Little Fool featured The Jordanaires, who were Elvis Presley’s backing singers. This song peaked at #1 in the Billboard Charts in 1958. This was Ricky’s first number one hit.

Poor Little Fool

I used to play around with hearts that hastened at my call
But when I met that little girl I knew that I would fall
Poor little fool oh yeah I was a fool uh huh
(Uh huh poor little fool I was your fool oh yeah)

She played around and teased me with her carefree devil eyes
She’d hold me close and kiss me but her heart was full of lies
Poor little fool
She told me how she cared for me and that we’d never part

And so for the very first time I gave away my heart
Poor little fool
The next day she was gone and I knew she’d lied to me
She left me with a broken heart and won her victory

Poor little fool
Well I’d played this game with other hearts but I never thought I’d see
The day that someone else would play love’s foolish game with me
Poor little fool

Jackie DeShannon – Put a Little Love in Your Heart

Well written and great pop song. I remember it from the movie Scrooged where now that film and this song goes hand in hand. Nineteen years after this song was a hit for Jackie DeShannon, Annie Lennox and Al Green covered it for the 1988 film Scrooged. Their version reached #9 in the US and #28 in the UK and reached the Top 40 in five other countries.

DeShannon co-wrote this song with her brother Randy Myers and Jimmy Holiday.

Jackie is a great songwriter and was inducted into the Songwriting Hall Of Fame in 2010. Other songs that she wrote or co-wrote are Bette Davis Eyes, What The World Needs Now is Love, Santa Fe / Beautiful Obsession and many more.

This song peaked at #4 in the Billboard 100 and #12 in Canada in 1969.

Jackie DeShannon: “My brother Randy was playing this little riff and I said, ‘Gee, I really like that riff, that’s great.’ All of a sudden, ‘Think of your fellow man, lend him a helping hand, put a little love in your heart,’ came just like that. I owe some of that to my mom because she was always saying that people should put a little love in their heart when things are not so good. I’d like to say it was very difficult, but it was one of those songs you wait a lifetime to write.”

Jimmy Page was said to write Tangerine about DeShannon after their breakup.

From Songfacts

She is best known as a singer, but Jackie DeShannon is one of the most talented tunesmiths of her time – she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010. She wrote many of her own songs, including this one, which she composed with her younger brother Randy Myers (Jackie’s real name is Sharon Lee Myers) and a Soul singer at her label (Liberty Records), Jimmy Holiday.

In our interview with Jackie DeShannon, she told the story:

Jimmy Holiday’s contribution came after Jackie and her brother started composing it, as he helped polish the song. Holiday, DeShannon and Myers went on to write Jackie’s hits “Love Will Find A Way” (#40, 1969) and “Brighton Hill” (#82, 1970).

DeShannon recorded a demo of this song which she had a hard time beating in the recording session. In our interview, she recalled struggling to get the right feel. “After about eight hours we finally got it and I just felt that I had done probably one of my best vocals ever,” she said. “But when I came back in to hear it somehow my vocal was erased. Somebody must have hit something. I called my mom and I said, ‘You know what, I’m just heartbroken. I’ve probably done the best vocal ever – at least it felt to me that it was right on the button – and I have to go do it again.’ So I went right back in there fast, before I lost the muse. When I got to hear the new vocal I felt that, of course, I wished I could have had the other one. But who’s to say? Maybe this was the better vocal.”

The song was released as the first single from the album in June of 1969, and it gained momentum when a radio station in Atlanta started playing it. In August, the New York radio station WABC made it a “Pick of the Week,” and stations around the country jumped on it, sending the song to its peak chart position of #4 on August 30. Said DeShannon: “The airplay was great, and in those days if you had a record in rotation, that could be very good money. I was actually able to buy a car for my dad, and I bought a house for my parents.”

Put A Little Love In Your Heart

Think of your fellow man, lend him a helping hand
Put a little love in your heart
You see, it’s getting late, oh, please don’t hesitate
Put a little love in your heart

And the world will be a better place
And the world will be a better place for you and me
You just wait and see

Another day goes by, and still the children cry
Put a little love in your heart
If we want the world to know, we won’t let hatred grow
Put a little love in your heart

And the world will be a better place
And the world will be a better place for you and me
You just wait and see, wait and see

Take a good look around and if you’re lookin’ down
Put a little love in your heart
I hope when you decide kindness will be your guide
Put a little love in your heart
And the world will be a better place
And the world will be a better place for you and me
You just wait and see
People now
Put a little love in your heart
Each and every day
Put a little love in your heart
There’s no other other
Put a little love in your heart
We ought to
Put a little love in your heart
Come on and
Put a little love in your heart