Great music
Kevin C. Key | Berwyn, Illinois USA | 04/01/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Ms DeShannon never really got the attention she deserved...and still does deserve. When I was in Jr. High (sorry, Jackie), I bought my very first record player. The first LP I bought to play on it was DeShannon's terrific recording "New Image." O.K., so I bought it in a cut out bin and paid only 59-cents--hey, that was half of my weekly allowance! But it delivered to me classic songs I did not know--and not just classic songs, but classic INTERPRETATIONS. Ever since I bought my first CD player in the late 1980's, I've been looking for these songs on CD. No matter how I've tried, I've never found any other singer's intepretations of these jazz standards that match the singing on these two LP's (New Image is included almost in it's entirety on this CD--along with the orginal tracks from the LP 'For You,' which I ALSO bought from a budget bin a few months after my first purchase).
And best gift to me of all? These CD's are in stereo! My original cut out copies of the LP's were both mono recordings!!! I'm a happy man."
Jackie dabbles in jazz-pop
Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 05/21/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"In 1967, a seminal year in the world of pop music, Jackie DeShannon opted to give mainstream pop and rock a break by recording two albums that veered towards jazz. This album contains one of those albums (For you) in its entirety, with nine tracks from the other (New image) included as bonus tracks. (The other three tracks from this album, recorded several months before the tracks you'll find here, were included as bonus tracks on the re-issue of Are you ready for this?) The appropriately titled New image was the first of the two albums featured here to be recorded and released, so the oldest tracks come after the newest tracks but as all twenty tracks sit well together, it doesn't really matter.
Perhaps because the music here represented a departure from Jackie's normal repertoire, she only co-wrote one of the songs here, That's the name of the game, with all of the other songs being from outside sources including classic songs such as When I fall in love (from the movie One minute to zero), It's all in the game (the Tommy Edwards hit that later became successful for Cliff Richard and, later still, the Four Tops), No easy way down (which Jackie recorded before anybody else did), If you gotta make a fool of somebody (a major British hit for Freddie and the Dreamers, though their version was also a cover), A Sunday kind of love and Night and day. Songs from the movies are included such as I haven't got anything better to do (from Doctor you've got to be kidding), Are we dancing? (from The happiest millionaire) and Merry go round in the rain (from the TV movie Who has seen the wind?).. So the songs come from movies, from the Great American Songbook and from mainstream pop, but the overall feel of the collection is jazz-pop.
This may not be what you expect from Jackie DeShannon, but here she showed what a versatile performer she could be. Some jazz-pop fans who don't normally bother with Jackie's music may enjoy this, while some of Jackie's fans may choose to avoid it. People with eclectic tastes don't have anything to worry about; if they enjoy hearing Jackie sing, they'll enjoy this as a contrast from her other music."
Track Listings (20) - Disc #1