Del Shannon (born Charles Weedon Westover; December 30, 1934 – February 8, 1990) was an American rock and roll and country musician and singer-songwriter, best known for his 1961 number 1 Billboard hit “Runaway“. Westover was born 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 the 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. In early 1959 he added the keyboardist Max Crook, who played the Musitron (his own invention, an early synthesizer). 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.

He flew to New York City, but his first sessions were not successful. McLaughlin then persuaded Shannon and Crook to rewrite and re-record one of their earlier songs, originally called “Little Runaway”, using the Musitron as lead instrument. On January 21, 1961, they recorded “Runaway”, which was released as a single in February 1961, reaching number 1 on the Billboard chart in April. Shannon followed with “Hats Off to Larry“, which peaked at number 5 on the Billboard chart and number 2 on the Cashbox chart in 1961, and the less popular “So Long, Baby”, another song of breakup bitterness. “Runaway” and “Hats Off to Larry” were recorded in a day. “Little Town Flirt“, in 1962 (with Bob Babbitt), reached number 12 in 1963, as did the album of the same title. After these hits, Shannon was unable to keep his momentum in the U.S. but had continued success in the United Kingdom, where he had always been more popular. In 1963, he became the first American to record a cover version of a song by the Beatles: his version of “From Me to You” charted in the U.S. before the Beatles’ version.