Shannon was born Charles Weedon Westover on December 30, 1934, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Bert and Leone Mosher Westover, and grew up in nearby Coopersville. He learned to play the ukulele and guitar and listened to country-and-western music by artists such as Hank Williams, Hank Snow, and Lefty Frizzell. He was drafted into the Army in 1954 and, while in Germany, played guitar in a band called The Cool Flames. When his service ended, he returned to Battle Creek, Michigan, and worked as a carpet salesman and as a truck driver for a furniture factory. He found part-time work as a rhythm guitarist in singer Doug DeMott's group, The Moonlight Ramblers, working at the Hi-Lo Club.
When DeMott was fired in 1958 for drunkenness, Westover took over as leader and singer, giving himself the name Charlie Johnson and renaming the band the Big Little Show Band.[3] In early 1959 he added the keyboardist Max Crook, who played an instrument he called a Musitron (an early synthesizer of Crook's own invention, though modeled on the commercially released Clavioline. Crook had made recordings, and he persuaded Ann Arbor disc jockey Ollie McLaughlin to listen to the band. McLaughlin took the group's demos to Harry Balk and Irving Micahnik of Talent Artists in Detroit. In July 1960, Westover and Crook signed to become recording artists and composers for Bigtop Records. Balk suggested Westover use a new name, and they came up with "Del Shannon", combining Mark Shannon-a wrestling pseudonym used by a regular at the Hi-Lo Club-with Del, derived from the Cadillac Coupe de Ville, his favorite car.
30 сен 2024
