Helen Shapiro - Career

Career

In 1961, aged fourteen, she had a UK #3 hit with her first single, "Don't Treat Me Like a Child" and two number one hits in the UK, "You Don't Know" and "Walkin' Back to Happiness". The latter did not top the UK chart until 19 October 1961, by which time Shapiro had reached 15, on 26 September. She had a #2 in 1962 with "Tell Me What He Said", achieving her first four single releases in the top three of the UK Singles Chart. Most of her recording sessions were at EMI's studios at Abbey Road in north west London. Her mature voice made her an overnight sensation, as well as the youngest female chart topper in the UK. At a mere 14 years and 316 days old when "You Don't Know" hit the top, she was nevertheless a year older than Frankie Lymon had been when "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" hit the UK number one slot in 1956.

Shapiro's final UK Top Ten hit single was with the ballad "Little Miss Lonely", which peaked at #8 for two weeks in 1962.

Before she was sixteen years old, Shapiro had been voted Britain's "Top Female Singer". The Beatles' first national tour of Britain, in the late winter/early spring of 1963, was as her supporting act. During the course of the tour, the Beatles had their first hit single and John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote the song "Misery" for her, but Shapiro did not record the composition. In 1995, during a This is Your Life highlighting her life and career, Shapiro revealed, "It was actually turned down on my behalf before I ever heard it, actually. I never got to hear it or give an opinion. It's a shame, really."

By the time she was in her late teens, her career as a pop singer was on the wane. With the new wave of beat music and newer female singers such as Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and Lulu, Shapiro appeared old-fashioned and emblematic of the bee-hived, pre-Beatles, circa-50's era. As her pop career declined, Shapiro turned to cabaret appearances, touring the workingmen's clubs of the North East of England. Her final cabaret show took place at Peterlee's Senate Club on 6 May 1972, where she announced she was giving up touring as she was "travel-weary" and had had enough of "living out of a suitcase". She later branched out as a performer in stage musicals, jazz (being her first love musically), and more recently gospel music. She played the role of Nancy in Lionel Bart's musical, Oliver! in London's West End and appeared in British television soap operas, in particular, Albion Market, where she played one of the main characters until it was taken off air in August 1986.