The “Golden Hits Of The 60s”
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DEON JACKSON
“LOVE MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND”
(DEON JACKSON)
Carla 2526
No. 1 March 12, 1966
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“I would cringe every time” the song came on the radio,” Deon Jackson told Goldmine writer Bill Dahl.
“I’d think’ ‘God’ I don’t like that.’ And I wrote it, too. I just don’t like that song.” The distasteful song?
Dean’s big musical moment, “Love Makes The World Go Around.”
Deon Jackson was born on January 26,1946, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As a child, he studied clarinet and
drums, and while a high school student, he formed a vocal group. The Five Crystals tried out for a spot
with Tamla Records and Maximillian, the keyboardist for Del Shannon’s “Runaway” classic. Nothing
clicked until 1962, when producer and publisher Ollie Mclaughlin–the man responsible for producing the
initial hits for Barbara Lewis, Del Shannon and soon THE CAPITOLS–caught Jackson and group singing
their hearts out at school concert.
“When we first meet Ollie we didn’t know about his standing in the music business,” said Jackson in
an exclusive interview. “We just knew him as this disk jockey with the ‘Scoop Scobby Dooby Show.’ He
came out to a lot of our rehearsals… he didn’t live to far from us. He was just going after this Detroit
group–the Capitols–when he picked me to work with. I wished that we coulda stayed together, but Ollie
could see; that while I was the youngest I was the one most serious about music. The others didn’t always
show up and they weren’t contributing. I was the only one writing.”
Ollie became Deon’s manager, and in the mid-’60s he recorded two singles on Jackson that were issued on
Atlantic Records–both bombed. Jackson, meanwhile, had dashed off that hated number and, unhappy
with the results, had tossed it aside. “I wrote that song when the United States was in a riot,” said
McLaughlin, “from Detroit to Florida, California to New York City. It was a result of the Civil Rights
movement. It happened one Saturday morning; a very sun shiny morning. My sister was singing in the
kitchen and I thought, ‘Jesus, all this stuff going on around me; ah, the world needs more love. Although
all this crap was happening around me, our dear God can make a beautiful day anyway.’ Three or four
minutes and the song was done.”
Eventually, Deon did record a demo of “Love Makes The World Go Round” and sent it off to his manager.
The song that would bring Jackson his mighty minute on the charts was recorded with buddy Edwin Starr
present and with Thelma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent–the female portion of Dawn–providing vocal
accompaniment. The demo sat around for another year until Ollie released it. Once available to the
public, “Love Makes The World Go Round” sold like no one would have believed.
“All of a sudden, I get this call from Ollie,” said Deon. “He was great at picking hits. He had the gift. I
had forgotten all about the song. Ollie said, ‘You realize you’ve got a hit record. ‘ I didn’t know what he
was talking about. He mention the song and I just sat back, shocked. I couldn’t believe it.
“Hey, maybe I didn’t like it–I mean it bugged me–because wrote it so fast and put it aside so fast and then
it sat around for a year before it was released. I guess I figured it shouldn’t be worth anything–it was to
easy,” said Jackson.
While “Love Takes A Long Time Growing” (#77, 1966) and “Ooh Baby” (#65,1967) were respectable follow-
up efforts, everything else Jackson released for the remainder of the decade sank unceremoniously from
view.
His proudest moment happened in 1969. “I was invited to the Command Performance before the King of
Portugal; the ‘Ball of the Century.’ It was an all-celebrity deal. This King had spent some three or four
million dollars getting the cast–Frank Sinatra, the Supremes, King Curtis, THE SWEET INSPIRATIONS,
Ike & Tina Turner…and I was invited there, too, by his son. It was something any entertainer would want
to be a part of.”
Shortly thereafter, Dean turned away from the record biz , and for much of the early ’70s tickled the
keyboards in New York City night spots like Nathan’s and Matt Snell’s. Thereafter, Deon moved his base
of operations to Chicago, where for the past 20+ years he has touched the ivories to Nat “King” Cole,
Johnny Mathis, and Frank Sinatra tunes. People in the know still ask Jackson to play “Love.” “It kinda
gets to me to do it,” Jackson told Dahl. “But I do it.”
Asked what happened to what surely seemed to be the beginning of something big, Deon replied, “I feel like
I’m back in Ann Arbor. Running into friends on the street, they’d inevitably ask, ‘What happened? ‘ As
Ollie’s organization got bigger and he had more hits, I think, he was trusting those around him more than
his intuition. Soon, he was turning down the stuff that I was writing for things by writers that had been
around longer than I. He just wouldn’t listen to my things after ‘Love Makes The World Go Round’…and I
wrote that.”