Jackie is an album by American popsinger and songwriterJackie DeShannon, released in 1972 by Atlantic Records. It was recorded in Memphis with producers Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd, and Arif Mardin. The album was not commercially successful, charting for two weeks on the BillboardTop LPs with a peak position of 196, but critics have generally appraised it favorably. In 2003, it was reissued under the title Jackie...Plus, featuring 10 additional songs previously unavailable on any album.
Critical reception
Jackie was met with positive reviews. Writing for Rolling Stone in August 1972, Stephen Holden said, "I've always liked Jackie DeShannon's singing — a gently throat-catching but never maudlin style — though on record after record her talent seemed too often to be thrown away on inferior songs with shlock arrangements. Now for the first time the full range of her abilities is shown to maximum effect … what is so satisfying about her singing is the tension she accumulates by always just holding back the full wallop." Reviewing for Creem in October 1972, Robert Christgau credited Wexler for performing another "conversion job on a soulful white femalepop singer", similar what he had done for Dusty Springfield on her 1969 album Dusty in Memphis. "Despite a couple of humdrum country soul songs on the first side", Christgau highlighted DeShannon's original compositions – "Vanilla O'Lay" and "Anna Karina" – as well as her cover of the 1971 Alice Stuart song "Full Time Woman". He later tempered his enthusiasm for the record, however, writing in that Wexler's attempt at modernizing DeShannon nearly succeeded. While finding the fashionable cover songs relatively inessential, he believed DeShannon was compelled to sing better on the more rhythmic productions and that her own written songs remain the LP's essential performances. AllMusic's Joe Viglione later said Jackie generally plays in the "adult contemporary folk" genre and, while Wexler, Mardin, and Dowd keep DeShannon in a relatively restrained musical space, "her voice is in great shape, and the music is created with loving care, making for a satisfying chapter in the singer's impressive body of work." Herald & Review entertainment editor Tim Cain deemed the record "perfect" and argued that DeShannon has been "tragically underrated". In 2019, it was included in Rolling Stones list of "20 R&B Albums Rolling Stone Loved in the 1970s You Never Heard". In an accompanying essay, Gavin Edwards said Atlantic's repeated attempt to "take an accomplished pop chanteuse and let her make a lush Southern soul album" may not have had the commercial impact of Dusty in Memphis, "but it was almost as stunning."
