Del Shannon

Charles Weedon Westover (December 30, 1934 – February 8, 1990), known professionally as Del Shannon, was an American musician, singer, and songwriter, best known for his 1961 number-one Billboard hit "Runaway", which was covered later by various major artists, including Elvis Presley and the Traveling Wilburys. In 1999, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to his music career, he had minor acting roles.

Shannon was born Charles Weedon Westover on December 30, 1934, in Coopersville, Michigan, to Bert and Leone Mosher Westover. He learned to play the ukulele and guitar and listened to country-and-western music by artists such as Hank Williams, Hank Snow, and Lefty Frizzell. He was drafted into the Army in 1954, and while in Germany, played guitar in a band called the Cool Flames. When his service ended, he returned to Battle Creek, Michigan, and worked as a carpet salesman and as a truck driver for a furniture factory. He found part-time work as a rhythm guitarist in singer Doug DeMott's group, the Moonlight Ramblers, working at the Hi-Lo Club.

When DeMott was fired in 1958 for drunkenness, Westover took over as leader and singer, giving himself the name Charlie Johnson and renaming the band the Big Little Show Band. In early 1959, he added keyboardist Max Crook, who played an instrument he called a Musitron (an early synthesizer of Crook's own invention, though modeled on the commercially released Clavioline). Crook had made recordings, and he persuaded Ann Arbor disc jockey Ollie McLaughlin to listen to the band. McLaughlin took the group's demonstration recordings (demos) to Harry Balk and Irving Micahnik of Talent Artists in Detroit. In July 1960, Westover and Crook signed to become recording artists and composers for Bigtop Records. Balk suggested Westover use a new name, and they came up with "Del Shannon", combining Mark Shannon—a wrestling pseudonym used by a regular at the Hi-Lo Club—with Del, derived from the Cadillac Coupe de Ville, his favorite car.

He flew to New York City, but his first sessions were not successful. McLaughlin then persuaded Shannon and Crook to rewrite and re-record one of their earlier songs, originally called "Little Runaway", using the Musitron as lead instrument. On January 21, 1961, they recorded "Runaway", which was released as a single in February 1961, reaching number one on the Billboard chart in April. Shannon followed with "Hats Off to Larry", which peaked at number five on the Billboard chart and number two on the Cashbox chart in 1961, and the less-popular "So Long, Baby", another song of breakup bitterness. "Runaway" and "Hats Off to Larry" were recorded in a day.

By August 1963, Shannon's relationship with his managers and Bigtop had soured, so he formed his own label, Berlee Records, named after his parents.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.