Create Song Styles
Yamaha Styles by Country => English => English - H => Topic started by: admin on February 15, 2018, 12:56:54 PM
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Helen Kate Shapiro (born 28 September 1946) is an English pop singer, jazz singer and actress. She is best known for her 1960s UK chart toppers, "You Don't Know" and "Walkin' Back to Happiness".
Shapiro was born at Bethnal Green Hospital in the East End district of Bethnal Green, London. Her early childhood was spent in a Clapton council house in the London borough of Hackney, where she attended Northwold Primary School and Clapton Park Comprehensive School until Christmas 1961. She is the granddaughter of Russian Jewish immigrants; her parents, who were piece-workers in the garment industry, attended Lea Bridge Road Synagogue. 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.
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 banjolele as a child and sang with her brother Ron occasionally in his youth club skiffle group. She had a deep timbre to her voice, unusual in a girl not yet in her teens: school friends gave her the nickname "Foghorn".
Aged ten, Shapiro was a singer with "Susie and the Hula Hoops," (with her cousin, 60s singer, Susan Singer) a school band which included Marc 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, based in London's Baker Street, after the school produced singing star Alma 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. Burman's connections eventually led her to a young Columbia Records A&R man named John Schroeder, who recorded a demo of Shapiro singing "Birth of the Blues".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuQlpFnlIBE
"Walkin' Back to Happiness" is a 1961 single by Helen Shapiro. The song was written by John Schroeder and Mike Hawker. With backing orchestrations by Norrie Paramor, the song was released in the United Kingdom on the Columbia (EMI) label on 29 September 1961.
It was number one in the UK for three weeks beginning 19 October, but only reached #100 on the US Billboard Hot 100, Shapiro's only US chart appearance. The single sold over a million copies and earned Helen Shapiro a golden disc.
Walkin' Back to Happiness