Comments on: HELEN SHAPIRO - “Walking Back To Happiness”

By: DJ Punctum

DJ Punctum — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:46:58 +0000

Calling Bob Stanley…

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:04:08 +0000

The patchiest of all the British 60s girls but, Dusty aside, the most talented. Got to say that Tell Me What He Said, the sequel to Walking Back To Happiness which stuck at 2 behind The Shadows’ Wonderful Land, married nascent soul and teen-pop pretty perfectly, yearning, busting with frustration.

Beyond that there’s Old Father Time (flip of Fever) which is a Mashed Potato Time/Please Mr Postman knock-off, feisty and absolutely in Helen’s ball park. And then the self-penned He Knows How To Love Me which sprung joyously, in a proto-Natural Woman way, some 2 yrs on from the pent-up emotion on Tell Me What He Said. It’s on the flip of Shop Around and will delicately twist your heart.

She was always best handling emotionally mature material (ie not Walking Back…). Check also Forget About The Bad Things, Silly Boy, Stop And You Will Become Aware, Take Me For A While. There’s a faultless 20 track comp in there somewhere.

By: Lena

Lena — Mon, 26 May 2008 19:54:02 +0000

I just heard this on the Capital Gold countdown and she is great! The background is a bit naff but I can ignore it pretty easily…and think about how she was her time’s Amy W (without the scandals)…

By: Ed

Ed — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 19:22:46 +0000

I agree with both these guys and personally believe that EMI and, Paramour in particular, should be shot for their inability to see HS as being other than a British Brenda Lee. [That title should have gone to Lulu although even that is an insult to Ms Lee] To add to the stupidity over ” Misery ” you have the failure with the Nashville recording of ” It’s my party ” to
a] Give it a more up beat arrangement from the veritable dirge that was produced.
b] Having done that, release it quicker, not wait for Lesley Gore to get her hands on it.
If you want to see what I mean and have a turntable where you can crank up the speed, cboost it up by 10%. Sounds a lot better. Same goes for ” Are you lonesome…” absolutely awful until you speed it up a little.
Tom, if you want see what she could do with better material and music producers try any of her Jazz LPs. Better still get hold of a Germany released LP called ” All for the love of Music ” [ EMI refused to release it in this country!!]. Some really good Pop style stuff. Same goes for a Japanese CD called ” I want to see you”. Both produced ln the late 60’s early 70’s I think.

What a waste.

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 16:35:49 +0000

Totally agree on the Chipmunk voices - this was probably Norrie Paramor’s idea of sophistication (It was also Paramor’s idea to not release Helen’s version of “Misery” which would have been the first Lennon-McCartney cover ever….)The singhles “as is” are so much of their time and a bit of an insult to the prodigiously talented Helen….but get to one of her Gospel outreaches and you’ll see the real Helen (plus, probably, a Chipmunk-free rendition of “Walking back to Happiness”…..)