Sharon Sheeley | Culture | The Guardian

Sharon Sheeley

The first song of the Los Angeles-born songwriter Sharon Sheeley, who has died of complications following a cerebral haemorrhage aged 62, was Poor Little Fool. It became a million-selling number one for Ricky Nelson in 1957 and the same year she co-wrote the hip-hitting Somethin' Else, which became a 1959 hit for Eddie Cochran.

Sheeley had been under rock 'n' roll's influence since she was 16. She met Elvis Presley when she and her sister, Jody, drove to Hollywood, where he was filming Love Me Tender. Presley called her "Shari" and said that when he returned from the army in Germany he expected her to have written a "Sheeley song for me".

After the Nelson and Cochran hits she was building a reputation within the music business when, in 1960, she went on Cochran's British tour. She was by then his girlfriend. Sheeley was noticed by producer Jack Good, and at his urging, Decca offered her a one-shot contract as a vocalist, but Homework, a single recorded immediately in London, was never issued. Then she was injured in the car crash that killed Cochran. Sheeley and American rock singer Gene Vincent were pulled from the wreckage.

Brought up in a family with Irish roots, Sheeley, a sometime teen model, gravitated to Sunset Boulevard in the mid-1950s. Her circle included Don Everly, who introduced her to Cochran. She was also linked romantically with Nelson. Sheeley's manager was Jerry Capehart, and through him she became a staff composer for Metric, a division of Liberty Records. It was after Sheeley's Born Again had featured as the B-side of Cochran's historic Summertime Blues, that a courtship with him began. Professionally, Sheeley's liaison with Cochran hit a peak with Something Else. It was later covered by the Move, the Stray Cats and the Sex Pistols.

After her convalescence she returned to songwriting and hits, of which the biggest was He's The Great Imposter by The Fleetwoods. By the mid-1960s, Sheeley was writing music with Mac Davis and, more lucratively, with singer-songwriter Jackie de Shannon. Chris Curtis of the Searchers, Sandie Shaw and Brenda Lee recorded Sheeley material during that decade. Breakaway - recorded by Irma Thomas in 1964 - climbed into the British top 10 as a Tracey Ullman cover in 1983.

The end of Sheeley's most prolific time as a composer came with a move to rural California that finished both her partnership with de Shannon, and her marriage to television presenter Jimmy O'Neil. An album retrospective, Sharon Sheeley: Songwriter, was released in 2000. Sharon Sheeley, songwriter, born April 4 1940; died May 17 2002

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