Dave Talas

Jackie DeShannon’s status as a singer is assured. Her vocal range, diversity and skill, as exemplified by her original and stunning performances of ‘Needles And Pins’, ‘When You Walk In The Room’, Bacharach and David’s ‘What The World Needs Now Is Love’ and the generational anthem ‘Put A Little Love In Your Heart’, will be well known to readers of this article. But her status as a songwriter also deserves to be celebrated – something that Ace have done for us with this 27-track cracker, “Break-A-Way”.

It wasn't too difficult to pull another collection of prime Jackie DeShannon copyrights together in order to assemble an eagerly-anticipated second volume of Jackie's songs for Ace's Songwriter Series. As ever, the hardest job for the compilers was to decide what to include now and what to save for another time. She Did It is a fine follow-up to Break-A-Way and will appeal to everyone who bought and raved about the first volume. As before, Ace have chosen songs for She Did It which cover Jackie's whole career. The final listing was approved by Ace fan-and-friend Jackie and includes several tracks of her suggestions. In the course of research, Ace have unearthed many rare gems that have not been on CD before and only two tracks have appeared previously on Ace.