Album: Jackie DeShannon, Her Own Kind of Light (EMI Zonophone)

Like Carole King, DeShannon bridged the Tin Pan Alley model of post-war pro songwriting and the singer-songwriter culture that superseded it: she was a technical songwriter who could come out front and sing.

It wasn't a great voice but she was a great writer, and this is as good a place as any to explore her works. She wrote thumping pop classics such as "When You Walk in the Room", a hit for the Searchers in 1964, but also, later in the Sixties on her 'Laurel Canyon' album, adumbrated the ultra-personal West Coast style we now associate with Joni Mitchell and King's 'Tapestry'. It's the pop classics that stand up and shake now.

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