{"id":501,"date":"2024-09-30T14:04:42","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T14:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/?p=501"},"modified":"2024-09-30T14:04:42","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T14:04:42","slug":"501-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/?p=501","title":{"rendered":"At 14\u00a0 Shapiro “Don’t Treat Me Like a Child” Wasn’t Just Her first Hit Song- Click to Know more"},"content":{"rendered":"

At 14\u00a0 Shapiro “Don’t Treat Me Like a Child” Wasn’t Just Her first Hit Song- Click to Know more<\/h2>\n

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Helen Kate Shapiro<\/b>\u00a0(born 28 September 1946) is a British\u00a0pop\u00a0and\u00a0jazz\u00a0singer and actress. While still a teenager in the early 1960s, she was one of Britain’s most successful female singers. With a voice described by\u00a0AllMusic\u00a0as possessing “the maturity and sensibilities of someone far beyond their teen years”, Shapiro recorded two 1961 UK\u00a0chart toppers, “You Don’t Know” and “Walkin’ Back to Happiness”, when she was just 14 years old.<\/sup><\/p>\n

Shapiro first achieved prominence in 1961 when her debut single, “Don’t Treat Me Like a Child”, reached number three on the\u00a0UK Singles Chart. After the two million-sellers, her success continued in 1962 with further hits including “Tell Me What He Said” and film appearances in\u00a0Play It Cool<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0It’s Trad, Dad!<\/i>. In 1963, Shapiro\u00a0toured with the Beatles, who were her supporting act. Since the 1970s, she has branched out as a performer in\u00a0musical theatre\u00a0and\u00a0jazz; she appeared in the\u00a0West End\u00a0and toured extensively with the British jazz\u00a0trumpeter\u00a0Humphrey Lyttelton\u00a0and his band.<\/p>\n

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Early life<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

Shapiro was born at Bethnal Green Hospital in the\u00a0East End\u00a0district of\u00a0Bethnal Green, London. Her early childhood was spent in a\u00a0Clapton\u00a0council flat in the\u00a0London Borough of Hackney, where she attended Northwold Primary School and Clapton Park Comprehensive School until Christmas 1961.She is the granddaughter of\u00a0Russian-Jewish\u00a0immigrants; her parents, who were piece-workers in the garment industry, attended\u00a0Lea Bridge Road\u00a0Synagogue. The family moved from Clapton to the Victoria Park area of Hackney, on the Parkside Estate, when she was nine. “It was, and remains, a beautiful place,” she said in a 2006 interview.<\/sup><\/p>\n

Although too poor to own a record player, Shapiro’s parents encouraged music in their home (she had to borrow a neighbour’s player to hear her first single). Shapiro played\u00a0banjolele\u00a0as a child and occasionally sang with her brother Ron in the\u00a0skiffle\u00a0group of his youth club. She had a deep\u00a0timbre\u00a0to her voice, unusual in a girl not yet in her teens; school friends nicknamed her “Foghorn”.<\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n

At the age of 10, Shapiro was a singer with Susie and the Hula Hoops (together with her cousin, 1960s singer Susan Singer), a school band that included\u00a0Marc Bolan (then using his real name of Mark Feld) as guitarist. At 13, she started singing lessons at the Maurice Burman School of Modern Pop Singing,\u00a0<\/sup>based in London’s Baker Street, after the school produced singing star\u00a0Alma Cogan. “I had always wanted to be a singer. I had no desire to slavishly follow Alma’s style, but chose the school merely because of Alma’s success”, she said in a 1962 interview. <\/sup>Burman’s connections included\u00a0John Schroeder, a young songwriter man at\u00a0EMI’s\u00a0Columbia Records, who recorded a demonstration tape of Shapiro singing “Birth of the Blues”, and motivated by her singing, signed her to the label.<\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n

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Early career<\/h2>\n

In February 1961, at 14, Shapiro released her first single, “Don’t Treat Me Like a Child”. The song was recorded at\u00a0EMI Recording Studios, Abbey Road with a nine-piece band under the direction of\u00a0Martin Slavin.<\/sup>\u00a0After Helen’s appearance on the\u00a0ITV\u00a0music programme\u00a0Thank Your Lucky Stars<\/i>, the record took off and reached number three in the UK Singles Chart in May 1961.<\/sup> According to AllMusic, Shapiro’s rich, mature voice made her “an extraordinary new phenomenon on the British pop scene.”\u00a0<\/sup><\/sup><\/sup>Her next single, the\u00a0ballad\u00a0“You Don’t Know”, topped the chart in August.<\/sup><\/sup> The follow-up, “Walking’ Back to Happiness”, was written by\u00a0John Schroeder\u00a0and\u00a0Mike Hawker\u00a0and featured backing orchestrations by\u00a0Norrie Paramor. The single quickly reached the top of the chart with far greater sales than her last<\/sup>\u00a0in October 1961, by which time Shapiro had turned 15.<\/sup><\/sup>\u00a0She had initially been reluctant to record the song, as she considered it old-fashioned and corny.<\/sup>\u00a0Both of Shapiro’s number-one singles sold over a million copies, earning her two gold discs.<\/sup>\u00a0Her mature voice made her an overnight sensation, as well as the youngest female chart topper in the UK.<\/sup><\/div>\n

Shapiro’s next single release, “Tell Me What He Said”, peaked at number two,<\/sup><\/sup>\u00a0meaning each of her first four single releases made the top three of the UK Singles Chart. Her success led to film roles; she appeared as herself in the\u00a0Billy Fury\u00a0film\u00a0Play It Cool<\/i>\u00a0and played the lead female role in\u00a0Richard Lester’s\u00a0It’s Trad, Dad!<\/i>.<\/sup>\u00a0Her final UK Top Ten hit single was with the ballad “Little Miss Lonely”, which peaked at number eight for two weeks in 1962.<\/sup>Before she was sixteen years old, Shapiro had been voted Britain’s “Top Female Singer”.<\/sup><\/p>\n

The Beatles’ first national tour of Britain, in the late winter and early spring of 1963, was as one of her supporting acts.<\/sup>\u00a0During the course of the tour,\u00a0John Lennon\u00a0and\u00a0Paul McCartney\u00a0wrote the song “Misery” for her, but Shapiro’s producer,\u00a0Norrie Paramor, turned it down, <\/sup>and she did not record the composition.<\/sup>\u00a0In 1995, during an episode of\u00a0This Is Your Life<\/i>\u00a0highlighting 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.”[<\/i><\/sup>Shapiro\u00a0lip-synched her then-current single, “Look Who It Is”, on the British television program\u00a0 Ready Steady Go!<\/i>\u00a0with three of the Beatles (John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison).<\/sup>\u00a0In January 1964 she released her cover version of the song\u00a0Fever, made famous by\u00a0Peggy Lee\u00a0in the late 1950s. Shapiro’s version, however, did not do as well as hoped, reaching only no.38, and was her last UK chart hit.<\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n

On 31 December 1969, Shapiro appeared in the\u00a0BBC-ZDF\u00a0co-production,\u00a0Pop Go the Sixties<\/i>, singing “Walking’ Back to Happiness”.<\/sup><\/p>\n

By the time she was in her late teens, Shapiro’s career as a pop singer was on the wane. With the new wave of beat music and newer female singers such as\u00a0Dusty Springfield,\u00a0Cilla Black,\u00a0Sandie Shaw, and\u00a0Lulu, Shapiro appeared old-fashioned and emblematic of the pre-Beatles era of the 1950s. <\/sup>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\u00a0Peterlee’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”.<\/sup>\u00a0Later, after a change of mind, she branched out as a performer in\u00a0musical theatre\u00a0and\u00a0jazz, one of her musical interests.<\/p>\n

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Later career<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

Shapiro played the role of Nancy in\u00a0Lionel Bart’s musical\u00a0Oliver!<\/i> in London’s West End\u00a0<\/sup>and appeared in a British television soap opera,\u00a0Albion Market<\/i>, where she played one of the main characters until it was taken off air in August 1986. Shapiro also played the part of\u00a0Sally Bowles\u00a0in\u00a0Cabaret<\/i>\u00a0and starred in\u00a0Seesaw<\/i>\u00a0to great critical acclaim.<\/sup><\/p>\n

Between 1984 and 2001, she toured extensively with British jazz\u00a0trumpeter\u00a0Humphrey Lyttelton\u00a0and his band, whilst still performing her own jazz and pop concerts. Her one-woman show,\u00a0Simply Shapiro<\/i>, ran from 1999 to the end of 2002.[<\/span>3]<\/span><\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Her autobiography, published in 1993, is titled\u00a0Walking Back to Happiness<\/i>. She appeared in August 2012 as a guest on BBC Radio 4’s\u00a0The Reunion<\/i> in a programme about “60s Girl Singers”.\u00a0<\/sup>In March 2013 she appeared on BBC Radio 3’s\u00a0Good Morning Sunday<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Since 2015, she has played in a trio called Hebron with Chrissy Rodgers and Simon Elman. They are promoted via Shapiro’s ministry umbrella, Manna Music.<\/sup><\/p>\n

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Personal life<\/h2>\n

She married the theatre producer\u00a0Duncan Weldon\u00a0in 1967.<\/sup><\/div>\n

In 1982, Shapiro met John Judd (real name John Williams), an actor with numerous roles in British television and cinema.<\/sup><\/sup> They were married on 31 August 1988.<\/p>\n

In 1987, she became a\u00a0Messianic Jew.<\/sup><\/sup>\u00a0She temporarily retired from show business in 2002.<\/sup><\/p>\n

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