Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

This week’s theme is  “Jack/John.”

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Leave it to me to take the long route to this week’s prompt! 😀 Instead of title/lyrics, I used the prompt for the artist’s name! 😉

Riding the success of her 1965 hit, What the World Needs Now is Love, Jackie DeShannon released Put a Little Love in Your Heart in the summer of 1969 to a country still mired in Vietnam War protests and racial conflicts. The song reached number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 by August of the same year and number 2 on the Adult Contemporary chart, making it DeShannon’s highest charting release.

I was in grade school during the 60s and sang in my elementary school choir, the all-city elementary school choir and my church choir. EVERYBODY wanted to hear Put a Little Love in Your Heart. It seemed like I was singing it in one choir or another every week for a year!  One of my music teachers said despite the turmoil our country was going through, most people simply wanted peace and hearing a group of 8-10 year olds sing about love went a long way in soothing stressed out adults.

Our country is again steeped in conflict and controversy but I believe most of us simply want peace. Our leadership is failing us and we’ve wasted enough time waiting. To paraphrase another song from school choir, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me…” and we can start by heeding Jackie’s lyrics from over half a century ago to “Put a little love in your heart.”

FUN FACTS:

• Jackie co-wrote the song with her brother, Randy and R&B singer/songwriter Jimmy Holiday.
•  In late 1969, the song reached number one on South Africa’s hit parade.
• Annie Lennox and Al Green recorded a version that was released as the ending theme song to the 1988 film Scrooged. The song reached number 9 in the US on the Hot 100 in January 1989 and climbed all the way to number 2 on the US Adult Contemporary chart.
• Put a Little Love in Your Heart has been released by almost two dozen artists including Any Williams, Dolly Parton, the Isley Brothers, and Leonard Nimoy.

I found several videos of Jackie performing the song… all bad! 😀 Jackie never got the hang of lip-syncing but she loves to flash the peace sign! 😀  I also added the Annie Lennox/Al Green cover from Scrooged. Annie and Al have never looked more fab-u-lous!

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for FeliciaDenise.com.

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.