Helen Shapiro ~ Tell Me What He Said ~ 1962

Helen Shapiro was born at Bethnal Green Hospital in the East End district of Bethnal Green, London,[1] and brought up in Clapton in the London borough of Hackney, where she attended the Clapton Park Comprehensive School. She is the granddaughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. Her parents were too poor to own a record player but they encouraged music in their home (Helen had to borrow a neighbour’s player to hear her first single). Shapiro played banjo as a child and sang with her brother Ron occasionally in his youth club jazz 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’. At the age of twelve, she was lead singer of “Susie and the Hoops,“ a school band which was a trio featuring Marc Bolan (then using his real name of Marc Feld) as guitarist. In 1961, at the age of fourteen, she had two number one hits in the UK: “You Don’t Know“ and “Walkin’ Back to Happiness“; and, i