Another music birthday: poet/vocalist Tuli Kupferberg, co-founder of early rock
satirists the Fugs . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7VQVzMR4RsMeanwhile, happy birthday again to Ben E. King . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJbvo40MB4Uhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AR-Isg9uVo. . . Koko Taylor . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEHrBHSbFa8. . . and Helen Shapiro (the clip is actually from 1963), here having a little
clowning fun with three of a certain about-to-be-worldwide-huge quartet . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw0N9oCZCdETrivia: The Beatles toured with Shapiro in 1963 as her opening act, at a time when
she was still big enough in England to command headlining status despite her hitmaking
days ending. It was the Beatles' first national tour of England; they got the tour most
likely because both Shapiro and them were signed to EMI labels. Shapiro and the Beatles
got along well enough that, after she suggested they make the newly-written "From Me
to You" their next single (they took her up on the idea), John Lennon and Paul McCartney
tried to return the favour by writing a song for her.
Incredibly enough, Shapiro's EMI label, Columbia (no relation to the American Columbia),
blocked the song from her and she didn't know for years to follow that she might have
had a crack at being the first performer anywhere to record a Lennon-McCartney song.
She might also have gotten a second wind as a recording artist; her chartmaking days
had pretty much ended by the time she met and toured with the Beatles.
Shapiro also got first crack at another song when she went to Nashville later in 1963
to record with those fabled session players (including guitarist Grady Martin and yackety-
saxophonist Boots Randolph; the album,
Helen in Nashville, anticipated Dusty
Springfield's
Dusty in Memphis though it didn't do half as well), but EMI refused
to give her version a push and the song found its way to Lesley Gore, who was just a
gifted kid from Tenafly, New Jersey at the time, and who was about Shapiro's age,
though Shapiro had already had a two-year chartmaking run in England.
The Beatles song Helen Shapiro never got to record:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfRQPECfwYwThe song EMI refused to push before Lesley Gore made it a chartbuster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDT_KSrWGuwAnd, a slightly later Shapiro recording in which she sings its co-author Carole King
right under the table, though said co-author improved as a singer in later years:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SK-z54L7VcShapiro spent the next decade recording but failing to become anything like the
hitmaker she was as a teenager, but she eventually became a respected album
artist in England who broadened her approach to include jazz and gospel.
