Listen: Alice Long / Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart
Alice

Specific probably to me alone, ‘Alice Long’ was right up there with the most named checked California songs of all time. This just reeked of an endless summer. Well that’s how I remember it anyway.

During the 60′s, bunches of records got Top 40 play made by guys a little too old to wear fringed haircuts and Carnaby Street fashions, but did regardless. It was even more noticeable once all the hip kids started to sleep in their clothes instead of iron them. Blame San Fransisco. I seem to remember The Association being in that old guys with squeaky clean threads space, Spanky & Our Gang, and yes Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart too. Despite great records, without Top 40 play, these acts were never going to have ROLLING STONE on their side and therefore basically doomed.

Luckily a few by Boyce & Hart did get heard, like ‘Alice Long’. Occasional singles would come on the air and instantly hit the refresh button, decades before a refresh button existed, like this one for me. We’d be riding around after school, wasting our parent’s gas, radio on, windows down and ‘Alice Long’ blaring out of the dash, all compressed up tight via a mono AM signal. Vivid as yesterday.

Why can’t Sirius do an oldies channel that plays mono singles mixes this way, from vinyl?

Listen: What The World Needs Now Is Love / Jackie DeShannon What The World Needs Now Is.mp3

Listen: Put A Little Love In Your Heart / Jackie DeShannon Put A Little Love In Your H.mp3

She was on one of those fund drive, non profit shows, where you can get some 8 CD set of the ‘golden age’ for a $150 pledge, and then there were a bunch of other 60′s acts playing for a mummified audience to hawk the whole shabang.

The Association were on too. They sounded great, but ouch did they look awful.

Jackie DeShannon on the other hand, sounded and looked beautiful, classy, deservedly confident. Did all the hits, which sadly totaled two (‘What The World Needs Now Is Love’, ‘Put A Little Love In Your Heart’). In her day, she was churning out singles, for years really. Signed to Liberty and part of the now romantic LA record business which included Phil Spector and Jack Nitzsche, many times the songs were not her own.

Listen: A Lifetime Of Loneliness / Jackie DeShannon A Lifetime Of Loneliness.mp3

There were a patch of Bacharach/David releases. Some were a bit over-written, too many parts, and not so memorable at the time (‘A Lifetime Of Loneliness’ comes to mind). This was never the case with those she had a hand in writing. Doesn’t matter, fact is, they all sound classic now.

Jim Lahat told me Jackie DeShannon made her first UK trip in ’07, stopped by the BBC for an interview, and was a total class act. She sure looked it the other night.

Listen: When You Walk In The Room / Jackie DeShannon 01 When You Walk In The Room.mp3

And when she wrote a smash, she really would hit it out of the park: ‘When You Walk In The Room’. Hard to believe her version charted for only one week in January ’64, peaking at #99.