Del Shannon was one of the greatest rock & roll singers to emerge before the Beatles changed the rules of the game in 1964, and while his time as a hitmaker was relatively short -- he reached number one with the instant classic "Runaway" in 1961, and his last song to crack the Top 30 was the superlative "Stranger in Town" in 1965 -- few of his peers created as interesting a body of work, or evolved with the times with the same grace. Shannon wasn't a teen idol, he was a singer whose best music had an understated but ...
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Del Shannon was one of the greatest rock & roll singers to emerge before the Beatles changed the rules of the game in 1964, and while his time as a hitmaker was relatively short -- he reached number one with the instant classic "Runaway" in 1961, and his last song to crack the Top 30 was the superlative "Stranger in Town" in 1965 -- few of his peers created as interesting a body of work, or evolved with the times with the same grace. Shannon wasn't a teen idol, he was a singer whose best music had an understated but strikingly effective emotional power. He could give a cheerful love song a realistic depth, and would lend a story of teens on the run a doomstruck paranoia that no one could match. (Happiness was never simple in Del Shannon's universe.) Shannon didn't chart much after "Stranger in Town," but he never sounded like a spent force, cutting a fine collection of Hank Williams covers (1965's Del Shannon Sings Hank Williams), dipping his toes into psychedelia to impressive effect (1967's The Further Adventures of Charles Westover), making a superb album in England with Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham (1978's And the Music Plays On, reissued as Home and Away in 2006), and cutting a pair of great "comeback" LPs produced by friend and fan Tom Petty (1981's Drop Down and Get Me and 1991's Rock On). There are plenty of Del Shannon collections that cover his hits and near-hits of the '60s, and a few that go deeper into his later work, but 2022's Handy Man: The Best of Del Shannon is unusually thorough, collecting 61 tracks on two discs, leaving no significant area of his career uncovered. Two of the most impressive things about the set are how consistently great the songs are (many written by Shannon himself) even as the styles shift, and that Shannon actually got better at making records as he went along; if the stuff on disc two is short on numbers you're likely to know, he never lost his footing as a singer, and made savvy use of the recording studio right up to the end of his career. Sitting somewhere between Rhino's excellent single-disc set, Greatest Hits (1990), and a massive box set like Bear Family's Home and Away: The Complete Recordings 1960-1970 (2004), Handy Man: The Best of Del Shannon has all the hits you remember along with enough lesser-known music to make a fun and informative road map to the whole of Shannon's music. The remastering and the liner notes are also top-shelf, making this one of the finest Del Shannon collections you can buy. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
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Add this copy of Handy Man: the Best of to cart. $26.85, new condition, Sold by newtownvideo rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from huntingdon valley, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2022 by Edsel Records.
Add this copy of Del Shannon: Handy Man-the Best of to cart. $34.65, new condition, Sold by Revaluation Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Exeter, DEVON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2022 by Demon Music Group.
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