What Does Helen Shapiro Say About Her Love For Me Tomorrow?
Helen Shapiro (1946) was England’s teenage pop music queen from 1961 until 1963. During a 19-week chart run, she once sold 40,000 copies of her biggest single, “Walkin’ Back to Happiness,” every day. The beehive-haired singer and actress, who was just 14 years old when she made her debut, swiftly developed into an experienced performer. In the early 1960s, she also made appearances in a few teen musicals.
In 1946, Helen Kate Shapiro was born in London’s East End in Bethnal Green. Her parents were piece-workers in the clothing industry, and she was raised by Russian Jewish immigrants. Her grandparents were members of the Lea Bridge Road Synagogue. Despite not being able to afford a record player, they promoted music in their house.
When Helen was nine years old, she played the banjo for the school group Susie & the Hula Hoops, which featured her cousin Susan vocalist, a vocalist from the 1960s, and a young Mark Feld, who would later play with the glam-rock group T-Rex. They allegedly sang covers of songs by Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. Before starting lessons at Maurice Burman’s Academy in London, she later performed at local bars with her brother Ron Shapiro’s traditional jazz turned skiffle group.
Shapiro’s voice was unusually deep for a girl who was not even in her teens. She got the nickname “Foghorn” from her school friends. Helen’s talent captivated Maurice Burman, who paid Helen’s tuition expenses in order to retain her as a student. In an effort to spark interest in his students, he wrote to multiple record labels. At one of the lessons, she was heard by John Schroeder, a young songwriter and A&R man at Columbia Records, EMI. He was so taken by Shapiro’s performance of “Birth of the Blues” that he recorded a demo and played it back to renowned EMI producer Norrie Paramor, who had signed Cliff Richard & the Shadows.
The maturity with which Helen Shapiro addressed the rape made Paramor doubt that the victim was a 14-year-old girl. So Helen dressed in her school uniform came to his office and started singing “St. Louis Blues.” A few weeks later, she recorded her debut single, “Please Do not Treat Me Like a Child,” which was written by Mike Hawker and John Schroeder. In May 1961, it peaked at number three in the UK charts, and the record company’s PR department cleverly capitalized on her age’s novelty value.
Three months later, Shapiro’s second release was the ballad “You do not know.” It made 14-year-old Helen the youngest female performer to reach the top spot in August 1961. The song eventually sold over a million copies and topped the charts for two weeks. She turned fifteen in September of that year, and she dropped out of school to focus fully on her job. Helen’s confidence as a performer was evident during her live appearances. She even had a headline performance at the storied London Palladium, which was almost unheard of for an act with her young and inexperience.
