From Runaway to Runnin’ Down a Dream

The man the world knew as Del Shannon was a guy from Coopersville named Charles Westover. Best known for his breathtaking 1961 single “Runaway,” Del Shannon was the show business name of a quiet, introspective small-town kid who made a profound impact on the history of rock and roll. After topping the charts with “Runaway,” he recorded another half-dozen top 20 singles and reached the Billboard Hot 100 on 17 occasions. He was the rare pop musician in the early 1960s who wrote most of his own material, anticipating the later commonplace designation of “singer-songwriter.” His melodic sensibilities and use of minor chords inspired numerous artists from the “British Invasion.” When he toured England, one of Shannon’s opening acts was the Beatles, who started as his fans and ended up his friends.

“He was Del Shannon on stage, but he was Charles Westover immediately when he got off the stage,” said James Popenhagen, who has helped keep the singer-songwriter’s memory alive with the “Del Shannon Show,” a long-running touring tribute to the deceased star which has the enthusiastic support of the Westover family. Popenhagen has brought the show across America and across the pond to England. In June, “The Del Shannon Show” kicked off the “Del Shannon Weekend” in Battle Creek, the place where Westover took on the “Del Shannon” moniker. The weekend included a series of events to benefit the Battle Creek Regional History Museum.

“My dad [Charles Westover] was funny and always cool to be around,” his son Craig Westover said. “There was a lot of time when I was younger when he was on the road a lot, so our time was really, really special.” In later years, Craig came on tour with his father to England on several occasions. He is now the manager of James Popenhagen.

“A lot of people have commented on Del Shannon’s songs being haunting in an emotional way but he said in several interviews that when he was writing he was in a good mood,” said Gary S. Gurner, a veteran screenwriter who has developed a screenplay based on Del Shannon’s life with approval from his family.

The multifaceted man that performed under the name Del Shannon began life in modest circumstances in West Michigan.

Charles Weedon Westover was born on December 30, 1934, in Grand Rapids, the eldest of Bert and Leone’s three children. Charles had two younger sisters, Blanche and Ruth Anne, with whom he remained close throughout his life.

Bert Westover worked for a streetcar company in Grand Rapids when Charles was born. The Westovers moved to nearby Coopersville when Bert got a job as a laborer with the county road commission. Coopersville was a small and traditional farming community made up primarily of deeply religious Dutch Hollanders. The Westovers were neither Dutch Hollanders nor particularly pious. Instead, they were conspicuous in their musicality.

Leone played ukulele and taught the instrument to her son. Charles delighted in the country music singles of the day and was simultaneously an enthusiast of the era’s black vocal groups, namely the Ink Spots. He learned to sing in a falsetto from Ink Spots recordings, a practice he later employed on some of his most popular songs, including “Runaway.” At age 14, he got a Sears and Roebuck catalog guitar, which was his constant companion in high school. Charles was always small for his age, growing to just 5’4”. He wasn’t a particularly strong student. Instead, he became known at Coopersville High as the class musician. As a teenager, he sang and played for orphaned children at the Muskegon Children’s Home on Terrace Street.

“Charlie,” as he was known around Coopersville, graduated from high school in 1953 and worked odd jobs around town during his adolescence and early adulthood. He met Shirley Nash while he was in high school. He fell in love fast with Shirley, who was the 12 ^th of 13 children in a conservative Christian family. They wed when they were both 17 and soon started a family of their own.

In 1956, Charles was drafted into the U.S. Army. The Westovers spent three years stationed in Stuttgart, Germany, where Charles got his first taste of the music business. He joined a band called the Cool Flames, performed frequently on Army radio, and developed a substantial following.

In April 1959, his father Bert suffered a brain aneurism while lifting a heavy piece of tile. Bert spent the remainder of his life in a rest home. Charles was honorably discharged from the armed forces because of his father’s injuries. The younger Westover returned to Michigan and took a job at the Brunswick furniture factory in Kalamazoo. He settled his family in Battle Creek, where he later reenlisted and served at Fort Custer. Westover moved on to a position selling carpets by day while playing in a bar band that performed regularly at the Hi-Lo Club in Battle Creek. He soon took over as lead singer of the group, which he rechristened the Midnight Ramblers. Westover enlisted Bob Popenhagen as a guitarist, a close friend he made working at Brunswick as well as the grandfather of James Popenhagen.

He also added an organist from Ann Arbor named Max Crook. Crook was a pioneer in the use of synthesizers. He modified an electronic organ called a clavioline into an instrument of his own creation that he called a “Musitron.” Crook’s instrument included echo effects as well as reel-to-reel capabilities. Its powers are put on full display in “Runaway.”

Westover’s group became a popular touring act across the state of Michigan, earning them the notice of Talent Artists, a music agency that got Westover and company a shot at the big time but also locked them into a deal that cut significantly into any future royalties.

At Talent’s suggestion, Westover found a new stage name, Del Shannon. “Del” came from a nickname for the Cadillac Coupe de Ville and “Shannon” was the stage name of a sometimes-professional wrestler who frequented the Hi-Lo Club named Mark Shannon. Talent Artists sent Shannon and his band to New York to record for Big Top Records

Shannon and Crook recorded a series of underwhelming sessions in New York before heading home. They returned with a tune called “Little Runaway” which featured Del’s falsetto, Max Crook’s otherworldly organ sound, and lyrics that displayed the country music storytelling sensibilities that Charles Westover developed over the course of his young life. The song began as a cluster of galloping minor chords that Shannon plucked on the Hi-Lo Club stage. In January 1961, Shannon, Crook, and a team of crack session musicians recorded “Runaway” at New York’s famed Bell Sound studio. Within weeks, the song was a smash hit, selling a reported 80,000 copies a day after Shannon appeared on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand . “Runaway” spent a month on top of the Billboard Hot 100 and was one of the top selling singles of 1961.

“That progression of minor chords used in the song gives it its sound of despair,” Brian Young said of “Runaway.” Young is the author of the brilliant Runaway: The Del Shannon Story (2023), an 800-plus page biography of the singer. Young is a veritable Del Shannon encyclopedia. He managed the Del Shannon newsletter, runs the Del Shannon website, and wrote the liner notes for several compilations of Shannon’s work.

“The Musitron sounded eerie, like it was coming from outer space,” Young continued, placing the release of Runaway in the context of the American-Soviet space race. A year later, the Tornadoes “Telstar,” too, made use of the clavioline in a hit song that made explicit reference to the space race.

“That Falsetto set him apart as well as a strong country influence,” Popenhagen said, placing Shannon’s songwriting in the tradition of country acts like George Jones, Hank Williams, and Merle Haggard, who were some of Shannon’s favorite performers. The “wah-wah-wah-wah-wonder” falsetto that Shannon employs on “Runaway” was soon a fixture on the airwaves as the likes of Lou Christie and Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons, too, made use of the singing method on their own popular recordings.

In late April 1961, Shannon returned home to Coopersville, where he was asked to address the student body at the local high school. He was not allowed to sing “Runaway” for fear that the students would act out. Shannon was to receive the key to the city that day, but the mayor was conveniently out of town. That evening, Shannon performed briefly on Main Street on the back of a flatbed truck. In 1983, Del Shannon received the key to Coopersville as a makeup for the snub 22 years earlier and performed a full-on concert in town.

Westover then moved his family out of a trailer in Battle Creek and into a beautiful home in Oakland County and got back out on the road. The record label tried to present Del as a teen idol in the vein of Bobby Vee or Bobby Rydell. The only problem was that Charles Westover was 26 and married with two kids (son Craig and daughter Jody) and a third (daughter Kym) on the way. They changed his biography to present him as a single, available 21-year-old. When Shirley traveled with him, she was described at times as his sister.

Other big hits soon followed. “Hats Off to Larry,” which also featured Shannon’s falsetto and Crook’s Musitron, reached number 5 in summer 1961. Shannon struck big in 1962 with “Little Town Flirt,” which incorporated a girl group sound. It reached number 12 in America and was an even bigger hit in Great Britain, where everything Shannon released seemed to reach the top of the charts.

In 1962 and 1963, Shannon toured Great Britain, drawing sold out houses across the island. On April 18, 1963, Shannon headlined at London’s Royal Albert Hall with an emerging band from Liverpool named the Beatles playing on the undercard.

The Beatles ended up opening for Shannon on several occasions and remained admirers for life. Shannon became the first American to record a Beatles song, “From Me to You,” in 1963.

The Beatles were far from the only British act to work closely with Del Shannon. Peter and Gordon liked Shannon’s “I Go to Pieces” so much that they covered it and made it a Top 10 hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

“He envisioned it more as an R&B song, but no one would touch it,” Gary S. Gurner said. “He happened to play it for Peter and Gordon when he was on tour in Australia with them.”

Del scored two more big hits in the US in 1964 with the haunting “Keep Searchin’” and “Stranger in Town” before his chart success started to wane. British Invasion acts were by then dominating the American charts. Shannon, too, found himself in a pitched battle over royalties with his management company.

Hoping for a fresh start, Westover moved his family to Southern California and signed on with Liberty Records, where he worked with the likes of Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, and Leon Russell.  In 1967, he toured the UK again and developed a relationship with Rolling Stones empresario Andrew Loog Oldham. Shannon recorded some singles and sessions with Oldham which failed to generate hits or an album.

“I think what really hurt him when he went to California and signed with Liberty Records. He didn’t get a new manager and I think that really hurt him. You don’t have somebody in your corner that’s going to stand up for you and what a good artist you are. He fell into what Liberty wanted him to do,” Young said, which included lots and lots of covers.

Liberty hoped a familiar song would strike a chord with the public, but it failed to generate any major hits.

Craig Westover remembers the Liberty Records years well. Musicians were a fixture at their southern California home.

“My bedroom was near the bathroom entrance. So, when they were in the garage writing, all night they would go through my bedroom. I remember all those songs really well,” he said. Craig remembers spending a lot of time with his father out in the California desert, shooting off .22s and spending the time he had at home with his son.

“He always brought a guitar, anywhere we went,” Craig said. “He was always writing. Always looking for the next hit.” His dad collected model trains and drove Cadillacs. One time, the unassuming Shannon walked into a Cadillac dealership in a t-shirt and jeans, and nobody gave him the time of day. He got back in his car and drove down the road to another Caddy dealership and bought a new car with cash on the barrelhead.

When not on the road, Charles Westover’s focus was his family. Craig remembers extended visits to Grand Rapids every summer to visit his grandmother, with whom he was extremely close. His father also spent a lot of time with his sisters Blanche and Ruth Ann. Blanche lived in Spring Lake, which he visited frequently. Charles’ mother eventually relocated to California and spent her final years with her son’s family.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Shannon moved into the production and mentoring side of the business as well, working with the likes of country singer Johnny Carver, who had a number 1 country hit with his version of “Tie a Yellow Ribbon”; he engineered a comeback for early 1960s novelty pop star Brian Hyland with “Gypsy Woman” (1970), which reached number 3 on the pop charts; Shannon worked closely with Los Angeles rock band Smith, who scored a top 5 hit in 1969 with their version of Burt Bacharach’s “Baby, It’s You,” a hit years earlier for the Shirelles.

“If you’re off the charts for too long, it’s awfully hard to get back there. As a producer, he was able to still use his ideas and creativeness with his own songs but to put them to use for other artists,” Young said.

During the 1970s, Shannon started performing on the emerging oldies circuit, particularly in Europe, while simultaneously working to kickstart his recording career. Shannon became friends with two longtime fans who became rock stars in their own right: Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty. Lynne never quite finished his 1970s album with Shannon but Shannon’s collaborations with Petty led to a fantastic album called Drop Down and Get Me (1981), which juxtaposed a then-contemporary rock sound with covers of several well-known 1950s and 1960s songs. Shannon’s version of “Sea of Love” brough him back into the top 40 for the first time in decades.

During this transitional period in his career, Shannon made a significant personal achievement—getting the best of a drinking problem that had grown over the years. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous and became a mentor to many other people facing the same problem. Friends that he made in AA became frequent dinner guests at the Westover home.

“He wasn’t an uncle we just knew about. He spent a lot of time with our family,” Brad Erickson said of Charles Westover, his great uncle. “Uncle Chuck” (as Erickson refers to him) and Aunt Shirley were particularly close to Erickson’s family, who lived in Luddington. Westover was a baseball fan and attended many of Brad’s baseball games when they visited Michigan. Uncle Chuck also loved to played catch. Starstruck fans chatted up Del Shannon regularly at Erickson’s ball games.

“I still have a glove that he bought,” Erickson said. “He had gone out and bought the most expensive glove he could find in West Michigan. ‘He came to the house and said, ‘hey Brad, I bought this ball glove so that we could play catch.’ When he left to go back to California, he said ‘hey. I’d like you to have this glove.’ I still have it and it is one of my cherished things.”

After more than 30 years of marriage, Charles and Shirley Westover divorced in 1986. He soon married Bonnie Leanne Tyson, who took to the road with him on his extensive late 1980s tours.

It was during this period of heavy touring that James Popenhagen discovered Del Shannon. He’d never heard of Shannon until he saw the film American Graffiti with his father, which featured “Runaway.” James learned that his grandfather was good friends with Del Shannon and played in his band. James’ father remembered Del Shannon crashing at his home his regularly. In 1986, the Popenhagens went to see Del Shannon in concert at the grand opening of the Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek.

They met Shannon backstage after the show. “It changed our whole life. Me and my brothers just started playing music,” said Popenhagen, who befriended Shannon and eventually started performing alongside him. “We were meeting Chubby Checker and Wolfman Jack, and we’d go see Del whenever he was within 100 miles.” Charles Westover became a surrogate grandfather for Popenhagen, telling him stories of playing all over Michigan with his grandfather, who had died several years earlier.

“He wanted to go get ice cream after every show and then sit around and talk about the old days with my grandfather and his family life. It was very little talk of the music business,” said Popenhagen, who ended up playing alongside many of the leading oldies acts.

As “Runaway” reached its 25 ^th anniversary in 1986, there was a clear uptick in interest in Shannon’s work. In 1986, “Runaway” became the theme song to the acclaimed NBC drama Crime Story , starring Dennis Farina and created by Michael Mann. Shannon rerecorded “Runaway” with lyrics appropriate to the circumstances of the show. Shannon also appeared on Late Night with David Letterman and several other television programs during this era.

In 1988, Tom Petty namechecked his old friend Shannon and “Runaway” in his hit single, “Runnin’ Down a Dream.” At the same time, Shannon got to work on a new album with Petty and Lynne. Sadly, these recordings were released posthumously on the excellent Rock On album, which displayed the lyrical, vocal, and instrumental acumen that his fans got to know over the course of three decades. Shannon died on February 8, 1990, at his home in Santa Clarita, California. He committed suicide not long after being prescribed a powerful anti-depressant.

Even though he’s been gone for nearly 35 years, Del Shannon and Charles Westover have never gone away. His music continues to speak to people and speak for both the past and present. Those who he knew him still speak warmly of their friend and their family member.

In addition to Crime Story , “Runaway” has been featured prominently in several Stephen King films, the latest season of Dexter , Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July , and the recent HBO miniseries The Sympathizer . Shannon’s big hits remain a fixture at 50’s diners. Historical markers honor Shannon at the site of the long demolished Hi-Lo Club in Grand Rapids and his childhood home in Coopersville.

Soon after his death, a “Del Shannon Car Show” began in Coopersville which tied together nostalgia for the great music and automobiles of the 1950s and 1960s. Two years ago, a different Del Shannon car show began as a part of Del Shannon weekend in Battle Creek. Moreover, James Popenhagen’s “Del Shannon Show” is a living, breathing tribute to the singer-songwriter’s work, which is not to be missed. It began not long after Shannon’s death and continues to wow audiences with the sound and performance that his fans grew accustomed to over the years.

“People keep getting exposed to the music in one way or another and they respond to it. Del’s music continues to resonate with people,” Gurner said. Thanks to the efforts of people like Gurner, Brian Young, James Popenhagen, and Craig Westover, the life and work of Del Shannon will not soon be forgotten.