Jackie DeShannon

Jackie DeShannon (born Sharon Lee Myers; August 21, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, radio broadcaster and actress who has had many hit song credits beginning in the 1960s, as both a singer and composer. She was one of the first female singer-songwriters of the rock and roll period. She is best known as the singer of "What the World Needs Now Is Love" and "Put a Little Love in Your Heart". She is the writer of "When You Walk in the Room" and "Bette Davis Eyes", which became hits for The Searchers and Kim Carnes, respectively.

Since 2009, DeShannon has been an entertainment broadcast correspondent reporting Beatles band members' news for the radio program Breakfast with the Beatles.

Sharon Lee Myers was born in Hazel south of Murray, Kentucky, the daughter of parents who were farmers and musically inclined, James Erwin Myers and Sandra Jeanne LaMonte. By age six, Sharon was singing country tunes on a local radio show. By the age of 11, she was hosting her own radio program. After life on the farm became too difficult, the family moved from Murray, to the Fox River Valley in Illinois in the early 1950s, first to her mother's hometown of Aurora, Illinois, where her father continued his career as a barber, and then (in 1952) to nearby Batavia, Illinois, to the north, where Sherry Lee (as she called herself) attended high school.

In May 1955 while in 8th grade, Sharon Myers, then 13 years old, was featured in the local newspaper for her vocal talents and personal appearances at community gatherings, the local hospitals, and for assorted organizations. According to the Batavia Herald, she had her own Saturday morning radio show Breakfast Melodies on radio station WMRO in Aurora. Further:

In March 1956, "Sherry Lee Myers" made "another guest appearance on Pee Wee King's popular Country and Western Television Show" on Saturday evening, March 3, on Channel 2—the CBS network affiliate in Chicago. The Batavia Herald wrote:

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.