Helen Shapiro had eleven hit singles in a period of less than three years, starting with her debut single, Don’t Treat Me Like A Child, which went to number three in March 1961, to her version of Fever, which just crept into the charts in January ’64. Among those hits were two number ones, both in the summer of ’61, and a number two the following winter.

 

Helen was born on September 1946 – making her 63 this year – in Bethnal Green in east London. She was brought up in a poor Jewish household, part of a large, extended family, her grandparents having been refugees from Russia. She was a pupil at Clapton Park Comprehensive School, where her friends nicknamed her Foghorn, rather cruelly, because of her loud, deep voice: The same voice that was to prove to be her fortune.

 

As a child Helen played the ukelele and sang along with her brother’s jazz band on occasion, and when he let her. But then, all of a sudden, she was in the charts; it can’t really have been that easy, can it? I spoke to Helen – exclusively for CBG – and she told her how it came about.        

‘The first time I sang in front of people other than my family was on holiday. I entered the talent competitions at the seaside; at Brighton, Margate, and Southend. When I was thirteen, though, a relative showed me an advert in The Melody Maker for a singing school – The Maurice Burman School Of Modern Pop Singing, which claimed to have started people like Alma Cogan in the business. I knew I wanted to be a professional singer and I thought ‘that’s for me!’

‘My dad could ill afford it, but I nagged him until he forked out the necessary payment – it was thirty bob – for me to go once a week. It was in Baker Street, up in town, and I went every Saturday. After a few weeks Maurice could see I had potential and knew we couldn’t really afford it, and waived the fee.

‘After about a year of weekly lessons he got in touch with Norrie Paramor, who was head of Colombia Records at EMI and had Cliff Richard and The Shadows, and the likes of Frank Ifield on his books. A recording test was arranged at EMI’s studios in Abbey Road and I sang Birth Of The Blues. I hadn’t yet met Norrie, and when the tape of my session was played to him he listened and said, ‘He’s good!’’

 

Helen’s next step was to go back with her parents, meet Norrie, and in no time at all – in October 1960 - she was under contract (signed by her dad because Helen was under age). Wasn’t all this terribly daunting though, I wondered? ‘No, not at all. I took it all in my stride. I used to go up to town on the tube. As far as I was concerned I was really grown up. I never suffered from nerves.

 

‘If I had one moment, it was when I recorded my first single in Number One studio at EMI, which is vast, and there was this huge backing band waiting for me, and I thought ‘They’re waiting for me! What do I know?’ But to hear myself played back in the control room was the biggest thrill. I’d have died happy at that point.’

 

That first single was an early teenage angst song, Don’t Treat Me Like A Child – specially written for her - but her voice was so mature it was hard to reconcile what you were hearing with the fact that it was being sung by a fourteen year-old. It got a lot of radio play and certainly connected with a lot of young record buyers, and in March 1961 it hit number three in the UK singles chart. In all it was in the charts for twenty weeks. As Helen says, ‘It took a while before it entered the charts, but it hit a nerve with the kids. What sent it into the charts was when I did the first ever Thank You Lucky Stars. Back then it came from Thames TV in Teddington and was introduced by Keith Fordyce.’

 

Three months later her second single, You Don’t Know, went to number one, and that was followed by a second number one with the best-remembered hit, Walkin’ Back To Happiness, exactly three months after that!

 

Helen played the Palladium, shared bills with some of the biggest stars around – and was still at school; ‘I had a very understanding headmistress, who would let me off school for an afternoon to record, say, Easybeat or Saturday Club. I could play concerts at half term, but even though I was top of the bill I had to close the first half because I had – by law – to be out of the theatre by ten o’clock. And people from the council used to check up!

 

‘As well as still being at school I still went to youth club, and still lived at home, in a council flat, and had the support of my family, which was good.’ So what did her friends make of her, I wanted to know; going to youth club but having a record at number one? ‘They were thrilled for me, but they were much more interested in the fact that I could get them Cliff Richard’s autograph.’ And was there any bad rock ‘n roll craziness? ‘No. It’s a pretty boring story. I spent money on dresses and sweets, and that was it. The only naughty thing was that I did secretly smoke.’

 

It was then all of five months before her next record peaked in the charts, though Tell Me What He Said went to number two. She was back in her three month rhythm with Let’s Talk About Love, though that release only got to twenty three. Two months later, in July 1962, she saw a number eight with Little Miss Lonely.

 

After that the Mersey groups began to crowd the charts, and though she had records in the charts in October 1962, in February, April and October 1963, and finally in January 1964, none got higher than thirty three. She released a further thirteen singles during the Sixties – including a terrific version of Shop Around – but none came to the attention of the guys collating the pop charts.

 

Helen was still only fifteen when she was voted Britain’s Top Female Singer, and it was while on tour with her – as her support band – that The Beatles had their first hit single. They also supported her on a performance on Ready Steady Go, where she sang Look Who It Is to three guys who had their backs to the camera – before they turned round, one by one, to reveal that they were actually John, George and Ringo (no Paul because there were only three verses in the song!). It is said that John and Paul wrote Misery for her, but strangely her record company decided not to let her record it. Shame, eh?

 

Helen’s records saw success in countries other than Britain. Walkin’ Back To Happiness was a modest hit in the USA, reaching just 100 on the Billboard charts, but she did very well in Australia, where the double A-side No Trespassing/Not Responsible went to number one in 1963 (which I don’t believe was released as a single in the UK).  Her records also sold extremely well across both Europe and Asia. In 1963 Helen’s earnings bought her parents their first house and allowed them to give up working, but she stayed at home until her first marriage at the end of the decade.

 

There was never any mistaking Helen’s rich, powerful voice. When she was a child her heroes had included Judy Garland, and you can sense a little of her style, but so much more. She also cites Ella Fitzgerald as a big influence, and – more surprisingly – Doris Day. Norrie Paramor was wise enough to let her voice stand alone. He didn’t crowd her with backing singers, as others might have done (Joe Meek would probably not have worked with her, not being entirely empathetic to women, but the mind boggles at any thought of how he might have produced her singles).

 

By the by, going back to Don’t Treat Me Like A child, Colombia brought out an EP containing that and three other tracks to get more mileage out of its success, and in those days EPs came with a full-colour photographic sleeve. Columbia released two near-identical versions from the same photo session; one with her looking slightly moody, slightly hacked off (to fit in with the song’s title) and another which shows her with a beaming smile. The former never really worked; the memory I have of seeing Helen on television in the early Sixties is of her grinning like a Cheshire cat for every second of her time on screen. She didn’t go cool and moody. She was thoroughly enjoying herself and was vibrant and vivacious.

 

When her chart career came to an end with that last single, Fever, she was still only seventeen years and four months old. This could have become a story with a less than happy ending, but Helen was too savvy for that. She broadened her appeal, building on the fact that mums and dads – as well as teenagers – had both appreciated her singing and liked her as a person. In a way it was the same career shift that Cliff took, and which allowed him to survive as an entertainer rather than rock ‘n roll singer.

 

Although her hits were pure pop, her albums and EPs had always included jazz and blues numbers, and now she went back to basics, singing jazz. As a youngster she hadn’t been allowed by law to sing anywhere where alcohol was on sale, but now she was able to shift into cabaret. She also undertook quite a lot of theatrical work and made any number of appearances on television. The TV work was in all sorts of light entertainment slots, and one strand of theatre that she made her own was as a principal boy in pantomime. She had no trouble filling an auditorium when she sang, unlike some of today’s ex-soap opera panto stars.

 

Helen starred in the West End production of Lionel Bart’s musical Oliver!, playing the main female role of Nancy, and in the stage show ‘Ello ‘Ello, ‘Ello. During that run she met the actor John Judd – one of those actors who, I’m sure he won’t mind me saying, isn’t a household name, but whose face you’ve seen on TV any number of times. They were married in 1988, and are not only still together but he is now her manager.

 

In 1983 she produced her first independent jazz album, entailed Straighten Up And Fly Right – all being her re-working of standards, the majority dating from the 1930s - which was very well received. Between 1984 and 2001 she worked with Humphrey Lyttleton and his band, and recorded a number of albums, including Echoes Of The Duke, Helen And Humph Sing Swing Together, and Humph ‘N Helen: I Can’t Get Started. Helen Shapiro had undoubtedly found both her voice – in the metaphysical sense – and her vocation. Or so it seemed.

 

Everything changed for her in August 1987 when Helen, as she puts it, ‘Came to faith in recognising Jesus as the Messiah. I didn’t stop being Jewish, I wasn’t denying my Judaism; it fulfilled my Judaism. I went from being lost to being found, and I became a believer.’ From talking to Helen it’s obvious that this was a very important point in her life. She retired from commercial music-making five years later to concentrate on singing in Gospel Outreach gatherings, and she performs at several of these evangelical gathering up and down the country every year, talking about her conversion and singing Gospel. She has released four albums of gospel songs, one of which also features Cliff Richard. What Wondrous Love Is This? is the working title of a new album, which will be recorded this autumn.

 

‘It might seem that I’m turning my back on the business’, Helen adds, ‘But it’s not really like that. I’m very appreciative for what has gone before, but that’s done now.’

 

I said in the opening paragraph of this piece that there ‘was a small number of female performers’ in these years, but come to think of it, there really wasn’t anyone (Susan Maugham had one big hit, of course) who enjoyed anything like Helen Shapiro’s level of success. We’re well ahead of the pop generation which included Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and Dusty Springfield as a solo artist, and in fact there really was no other British woman who came near Helen’s achievement in the rock ‘n roll years.

 

HELEN’S TOP TEN HITS

 

Don’t Treat Me Like A Child	3	March 1961
You Don’t Know	1	June 1961
Walkin’ Back To Happiness	1	September 1961
Tell Me What He Said	2	February 1962
Little Miss Lonely	8	July 1962