Search - Del Shannon :: Classic Masters

Rock & roll time capsule

James G. Benson | muskegon, MI | 02/27/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"If there is any rock & roll performer whose music should be preserved in a time capsule, it's Del Shannon. Growing up picking strawberries in rural Coopersville, Michigan in the late fifties, he started writing and performing his music with a small band that included one of the primitive electronic instruments that would come to be known as synthesizers. His simple songs told a story about losing your girl, searching for your girl, finding your girl, keeping another guy from getting your girl, and did all of the above with a danceable sixties sock-hop beat, not to mention a great voice that slipped effortlessly into a falsetto that few could emulate. This music from the heartland attracted a following, reaching a crescendo in 1961 with Runaway, which spent over twenty weeks at number one on the charts, and an appearance on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Over twenty years later his music was still rocking, by then a new generation of Letterman Show viewers. He didn't put out a huge volume of work, but all of us are lucky we can still enjoy what he left us. This deserves five stars but for one or two omissions like Two Kinds of Teardrops. Appreciate what is here-seminal rock & roll."