Tuesday, June 18, 2002

More than 12 years after his death of a drug overdose in Santa Clara, Calif., Del Shannon's music will come alive once again in the 1960s rocker's hometown of Coopersville.

The annual tribute will once again be part of this year's Coopersville Summerfest.

The difference this year is that during Summerfest, a New York musician and his film crew will be in Coopersville to shoot a video for a remake of one of Shannon's first hits.

Joe Glickman and his band "Joe G & The Zippity Doo Wop Band" will be in Coopersville on Aug. 10 to shoot the video for the cover of "So Long Baby." The Del Shannon song has been included in a new tribute album to Shannon expected to be released later this year.

Glickman said that coming to Coopersville to shoot the video seemed like a natural thing to do because of the Del Shannon museum and because the timing of the video shoot coincides with the city's annual Summerfest celebration, which features an annual tribute to Shannon and a large rally of 1960-era cars.

The crew will also shoot part of the video at Rosie's Diner in Rockford the night before. Scenes of a drive-in movie theater are being shot in Albany, N.Y., starting in the next couple of weeks, according to Glickman.

He is looking for up to 30 local people to work in the video shoot in Coopersville.

"I really hope we can get the people to turn out for the video shoot. We are recreating 1961, when the song first came out, so people will be dressed in the clothing of the period and even the cars in the video will have license plates from 1961 on them," he said.

Anyone interested in applying to be in the video shoot, he said, can find the information in Glickman's production company Web site at www.crystalhorizon.com.

Glickman is financing the entire video project on his own and expects the final bill to run to at least $30,000. "I hope I can break even on the project that is my goal."

Jan Richardson, Coopersville Chamber of Commerce director, said Chamber and city officials have worked hard to make sure that Glickman and his crew have everything they need to get the Coopersville portion of the video shot on time.

"We are doing everything we can to make sure things go smoothly. This is exciting for everyone involved," she said.

Glickman preformed in Coopersville last year as part of the 2001 Summerfest. The response not only from the crowds, but also from Shannon's widow, encouraged the 24-year-old Glickman to record other songs by the 1960s star as well as his current release on "So Long Baby."

The idea for the video rose out of listening to a long-lost cassette of Shannon's music last year after he had been to Coopersville, Glickman said.

"I found a Del Shannon tape in my car that I hadn't listened to in over a year and I popped it into the cassette player. When I heard "So Long Baby" it was as if I was hearing it for the first time," he said.

He must have skipped over the song whenever he listened to the tape previously, he said.

"Once I listened to it, I knew I had to make a video of the song and I knew I couldn't lip-synch to the original version because that would be a sacrilege," Glickman said.

So he said he painstakingly recreated the music for the song as well as the original instrumentation so he could record the song himself. He was lucky enough to even get original "musitron" player Max Crook to play on the sessions

Cook wrote and recorded the original signature keyboard tracks on "Runaway."

Glickman hopes his remake of "So Long Baby," and the release later this year of the video and the tribute album, will introduce his generation to the greatness of the music of Del Shannon and the other artists of the period.

"Shannon wrote songs with great melodies but he had lyrics which were full of tension and angst," he said. "Musicians are not writing songs like that anymore."

Glickman makes his living as a cinematographer and photographer and performs music in his spare time. His production company, Crystal Horizon Productions, is currently finishing a documentary called "Traces of Love." It documents the career of the vocal group the "Classics Four." He has also worked with several productions on the PAX network.

Del Shannon was born Charles Westover in 1934. He attended Coopersville High School. After a stint in the army, he moved to Battle Creek in the late 1950s.

He changed his name to Del Shannon in 1958 when he started his singing career. He reached instant star status in 1961 when his first single "Runaway" rocketed to the top of the charts. Shannon had a string of hits on the 1960s and '70s before a battle with alcohol started to take control of his life. He found sobriety on the 1980s but mental difficulties reportedly caused him to take an overdose of medications in February 1990, ending his life.

Over the years, artists like Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, Tom Petty, and Juice Newton recorded Shannon's songs.

The Del Shannon tribute album is scheduled to be released in the fall of 2002 and includes Shannon song's recorded by Randy Bachman of the Guess Who, as well as by members of the Electric Light Orchestra and by several other artists.

© 2002 Advance Newspapers. Used with permission