Customer Reviews

Laurel Canyon (Reis)

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Among the elite insider music community "Laurel Canyon" is a well known underground musical masterpiece that should have had greater commercial success but due to a strange lack of radio support and poor promotion from Liberty Records this musical treasure is mainly enjoyed by hardcore connoisseurs of the finest the world of music has to offer which is exactly what the great "Laurel Canyon" is; a solid musical masterpiece. Kudos to the great London based RPM Records for this superbly remastered release of a great classic complete with lavish liner notes and a wonderful array of photos. Check out other Jackie DeShannon releases on RMP Records as every superb collection is a must have!
Opening this soulful set is a Jackie DeShannon original "Laurel Canyon" with a loose funky arrangement and from the top easy to see Jackie has a hot & cooking group backing her soulful vocals. Mac Rebbenack (Dr. John) is the funkiest piano this side of New Orleans, Russ Titleman in great form on Acoustic Guitar, keyboard legend Harold Batiste, Jr. also peak form with Barry White leading the richly varied background vocals making for a Jackie experience unlike any other in her magnificent career. "Sunshine Of Your Love" is a hot rocker while "Crystal Clear" is a deeply soulful mesmerizing vocal framed beautifully by a haunting guitar with a gorgeous unique arrangement. Wildly funky arrangement with superb piano licks make "She's My Best Friend" another winning rocker while "I Got My Reason" is pure gospel with a raw vocal from Jackie. "Holly Would" continues the gospel feel being another unique original from Jackie. Motown Smokey Robinson classic "You've Really Got A Hold On Me" is given a rocking gospel workout and would have been a huge mega-hit if released as a single...definitive version of "The Weight" was a hit but should have gone to #1 as it is that great and upon hearing this for the first time felt Jackie to be one of the greatest blue-eyed soul singers on the planet and still do...classic performance is deeply soulful & deserving of a "Grammy Award"! "Bitter Honey" is another tasty cooker and there goes "Dr. John" on piano again...beautifully haunting intimate original "Come And Stay With Me" show what this legendary singer is all about as does the classic "LA" which is the most engrossing song about the great city ever & totally infectious...try not using the repeat mode! "LA" flows beautifully and captures the feel of life in Los Angeles with exhuberant soulful brilliance and amazing this great song wasn't a #1 smash hit...what were they thinking? Ending this masterwork is the deeply moving original "Too Close" with a scorching performance that makes one weep as this brilliant masterwork was not given the massive exposure deserved...hopefully this great reissue will give this engrossing work exposure it justly deserves...listen in music lovers and don't miss out on this truly magical musical experience the second time around...true musical genius!
Now for the awesome bonus tracks starting with great Bobby Womack originals written and produced by the soul legend himself just for Jackie...he knew! "Trust In Me" is awesome with Jackie at her soulful peak on a great song with a fascinating arrangement and wondrous vocal while the funky "What Is This" has a great driving rhythm and "Happy Go Lucky Girl" is loose and soulful as is the winning "Ooh, You Did It Again" and it is easy for one to see this should have been a whole lp as this is a great and musically inspired pairing! A jazzy and hypnotic "Effervescent Blue" and the remainder of this grand musical experience are Jackie DeShannon originals that show this great singer/songwriter as a groundbreaking original and a real trailblazer starting from the late 50's throughout the 60's and beyond. "The Greener Side" is an early song that has the great feel of the songs on "To Be Free" which is one of Jackie's greatest that came a few years later. "Children & Flowers" preceeds the great sixties classic anthem "Put A Little Love In Your Heart" that truly defined the sixties and is still valid today being recorded by various artists to great success a number of times over the years yet this original is still the ultimate being a timeless message and glorious passionate performance that has always been a warm and comforting experience from a great artist...thank you Jackie DeShannon!

What do you do if you were a mid 1960s pop singer with a really killer set of pipes. You turn around, and it is 1969. The world--and the rock world--you got famous in is completely gone. No one is listening to pop ballads anymore, or if someone is and is in their right mind, they sure are not fessing up


Well, there is always Vagas. BUT if you are a really class act, a great songwritter, like, well, like our Jackie Deshannon right here, you have a much better option,

Go to LA. Get the best musicians like Jim Gordon. Start writing a rootsy countryfried pop soul that can appeal to school girls and cosmic cowboys and hippies alike. Music that is so good, so genuine, so attached to the best in both pop and rock, anyone would have to be chemically imbalanced not to like it.

That is exactally what Jackie Deshannon does on Laural Canyon. She covers tunes by Cream, the Band, and some of her own songs, in themselves forces to be reckoned with.

This is just amazing music. Listen to her voice on any of these tracks--the way she uses backup singers the way Dusty, or more fitting, Areatha did. It is pop, it is countrified, but it works as soul--real soul.

Listen to "Sunshine Of Your Love," "The Weight," or "LA." This was the cutting edge music of the era. In lesser hands, such attempts by a pop princess would ring hollow.

"L.A." in particualr is revealing. Think of the line "fun loving people/in the land of Disney/Gonna keep me smilin'." In a lesser singers hands, this would be cartoon fluff. But Jackie is talking about being young, hopeful, on the road to a better place in 1969: the year of Easy Rider. When such dreams were plausable. In her sweetness and in her swagger she genuinely understood what was happening in music in 1969, the world in 1969, and the world of music in 1969.

Forget her voice for a second--yeah, right--as a singer, a practitionor of music, Deshannon's insticts are just dead, dead, dead on target.

This is just pitch perfect, for 1969, and 2010.

In the liner notes, Jackie says that she had more freedom when recording her 1968 album, Laurel canyon, than she ever had previously, with very little feedback from the record label. This could be because the record label had plenty of confidence in Jackie, or it could be that Jackie wasn't very important to them at the time (maybe somebody else was occupying their attention), but Jackie doesn't explain why she had this extra freedom. Whatever the reason, the result was a pop-rock album with folk influences, which may have inspired folk singer-songwriters such as Joni Mitchell and Carole King. While the tracks that made up the original album all date from 1968, the bonus tracks do not. The first four, all produced by and three of them written by Bobby Womack, date from 1967 while the last four, all written by Jackie, date from 1969.

Laurel Canyon is the area of Los Angeles in which Jackie lived at the time. The title track reflects the feeling of the area at the time. Come and stay for me, a song that Jackie wrote for Marianne Faithfull in 1965, finally made its appearance on a Jackie DeShannon album in 1968, but one is left to wonder why it took Jackie so long to record her own version. Jackie also wrote three other songs on the main album (L A, Too close and Holly would), all of them superb. I got my reason (written by Barry White and featuring his vocals), Crystal clear, She's my best friend and Bitter honey are all wonderful original songs although Jackie didn't write them. The main album also includes great covers of Sunshine of your love (Cream), The weight (The Band) and You've really got a hold on me (Smokey Robinson).

Four of the bonus tracks have never been released before, but they are worth hearing. Of the other four, two Bobby Womack productions (Trust in me, What is this) were released together as a single but not on an album. One of Jackie's own songs (Effervescent blue) appeared as the B-side of a single. The final bonus track (Put a little love in your heart) is Jackie's biggest-ever hit and many other singers have covered the song. It didn't really need to be included here as the entire album from which it came is available on another CD in the series, complete with its own bonus tracks, but I don't really mind it being here too.

This is yet another magnificent collection of Jackie's music, further reminding us just what a fantastic singer and songwriter she is.

The elasticity of the vocals mirrors the unfettered emotions and expansive hopes of the era that defined this music. Blissed-out soul, psychedelica and joyful pop collide in "Put a Little Love in Your Heart," " Happy Go Lucky Girl," and "Sunshine of Your Love." And if you long for this kind of music with today's sparkling production values, you should also pick up current groovesters and fellow female Brits Swing Out Sister ("Somewhere Deep in the Night") or Noonday Underground ("Self Assembly").