FEATURE:
Groovelines
Del Shannon - Runaway
___________
FOR this Groovelines…
I am highlighting a song that is sixty years old – perhaps the oldest track I have included in this feature. Del Shannon’s Runaway is a song that I discovered as a child. Not only must have it been exciting and strange to hear a song like Runaway in 1961. I wonder what people make of it now when they hear it for the first time! I am not sure whether many people, say, under the age of forty listen to a lot of music from the early-1960s. Aside from bands like The Beatles, it can be quite hit and miss. Runaway is a slice of Rock and Roll gold that, unsurprisingly, got to number-one in the U.S. and U.K. There is a great article that goes into more depth regarding one of the defining songs from the time. Prior to that, this Wikipedia article discusses the origins of Runaway and how successful it became:
“Singer-guitarist Charles Westover and keyboard player Max Crook performed together as members of "Charlie Johnson and the Big Little Show Band" in Battle Creek, Michigan, before their group won a recording contract in 1960. Westover took the new stage name "Del Shannon", and Crook, who had invented his own clavioline-based electric keyboard called a Musitron, became "Maximilian".
After their first recording session for Big Top Records in New York City had ended in failure, their manager Ollie McLaughlin persuaded them to rewrite and re-record an earlier song they had written, "Little Runaway", to highlight Crook's unique instrumental sound. On January 21, 1961, they recorded "Runaway" at the Bell Sound recording studios, with Harry Balk as producer, Fred Weinberg as audio engineer and also session musicians on several sections: session musician Al Caiola on guitar, Moe Wechsler on piano, and Crook playing the central Musitron break.
Other musicians on the record included Al Casamenti and Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar, Milt Hinton on bass, and Joe Marshall on drums. Bill Ramall, who was the arranger for the session, also played baritone sax. After recording in A minor, producer Balk sped up the recording to pitch just below a B-flat minor. "Runaway" was released in February 1961 and was immediately successful. On April 10 of that year, Shannon appeared on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, helping to catapult it to the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for four weeks. Two months later, it reached number one on the UK's Record Retailer chart, spending three weeks in that position. On Billboard's Hot R&B Sides, "Runaway" peaked at number three.
The song was ranked No. 5 on Billboard's end of year "Hot 100 for 1961 – Top Sides of the Year" and No. 9 on Cash Box's "Top 100 Chart Hits of 1961”.
I think that it is the simplicity of Del Shannon’s Runaway that makes it such effective and memorable! In 1961, it must have sounded quite advanced and different. Now, one can appreciate how it sticks in the head because it delivers so much in 2:17 (or thereabout). With a timeless chorus and passionate central vocal, it is no surprise that the song is so well-regarded!
It is worth knowing more about the song and how it came to be. Earlier this year, Medium marked sixty years of Runaway by delving deeper and providing some context. The combination of Del Shannon’s vocal and a new electronic keyboard, the Musitron, made Runaway an instant classic:
“Shannon was born Charles Westover in Grand Rapids, Michigan. By 1958, Shannon sold carpet by day and played guitar by night at a local club, where he met keyboardist Max Crook at a Battle of the Bands contest.
Crook, an electronics geek, recorded some of Shannon’s earliest songs and they began to write together. Shannon’s voice was paired with one of Crook’s inventions: the Musitron, an electric keyboard that pre-dated the Moog synthesizer by three years. The Musitron created one of rock’s most memorable instrumental breaks.
“We were playing at the Hi-Lo nightclub in Battle Creek, Michigan, a few nights a week and Del decided he was getting tired of the same-old, same-old blues progression songs. Let’s try something different, Del told me,” Crook recalled in Forbes magazine.
“So he started singing random words — some here, some there. Then he told me to play something for the musical bridge in the middle of the song. At that time, I had built a little instrument called the Musitron, and it was sitting alongside the keyboard of the piano. So when the time came to make the bridge, I just played what came out of my head. What you hear on the record is precisely what I came up with on the Musitron, with no changes whatsoever.”
Crook brought his Musitron from Grand Rapids to New York, where he set it up before skeptical engineers at Bell, then one of the first four-track studios in the world. Shannon’s website explains that when Balk returned to Detroit, he felt that Shannon’s singing was flat and should be re-recorded. Instead, Bell engineers sped up Shannon’s vocals to nearly one-and-a-half times its original speed.
When Shannon heard the way his voice was manipulated, Balk recalled, he was angry.
“He said, ‘Harry, that doesn’t even sound like me!’ I just remember saying, ‘Yeah, but Del, nobody knows what the hell you sound like!’ Two weeks after its release, forget it! It’s selling 50,000. It’s selling 60,000. Eventually, it topped off selling 80,000 records a day. After ‘Runaway’ became a million-seller, Del came in and thanked me for what I had done”.
I have loved Del Shannon’s Runaway since I was a child. I play it now and it evokes such strong memories. Sadly, Del Shannon (Charles Weedon Westover) took his own life in 1990. He left behind so much great music, though Runaway is his finest moment. Whilst the composition is spritely and dances from the speakers, the lyrics hide a real pain. The chorus is especially striking: “I'ma walkin' in the rain/Tears are fallin' and I feel the pain/Wishin' you were here by me/To end this misery”. A track that so many people can relate to, Runaway is…
AN all-time classic.