Helen Shapiro

HELEN SHAPIRO & HUMPHREY LYTTELTON - Echoes of the duke (1985)

Cassette rip.

1. Take The 'a' Train
2. I Ain't Got Nothin' But The Blues
3. I Got It Bad
4. Cross A Busy Street
5. Just Squeeze Me
6. I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart/Don't Get Around Much Anymore
7. It Don't Mean A Thing
8. Drop Me Off In Harlem
9. Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me
10. Pritti Nitti
11. Solitude/Mood Indigo
12. Just A-Sittin' And A-Rockin'
13. Echoes Of The Duke
14. Caravan

Helen Shapiro was born in .Bethnall Green and brought up in Clapton, East London. With the release of her singles 'Don't Treat Me Like a Child', 'You Don't Know' and 'Walkin' Back to Happiness' at the tender age of fourteen she achieved internation.al stardom, following up these discs with half a dozen more single hits plus best selling EP's and LP's. She appeared many times as a London Palladium headliner and topped the bill in a nation-wide concert tour of Britain with The Beatles as her support act! During this time she won many awards including the Variety Club's Silver Heart as The Most Promising Newcomer, The Melody Maker Award as Britain's Most Popular Female Vocalist and runner-up to Top World Female Singer. By the age of 19 she'd sold millions of records and had three Silver Discs to her credit.

Humphrey Lyttelton is descended from a long line of land-owning, political, military, clerical, scholastic and literary forbears. Not a musician among them. He claims to have most in common with a former Humphrey Lyttelton who was executed for complicity with Guy Fawkes in the Gunpowder Plot.He formed his first jazz band in 1948 after spending a year with George Webb's Dixielanders. Humphrey Lyttelton and his Band, with Wally Fawkes on clarinet, soon became the leading traditional jazz band in Britain,with a high reputation in Europe gained through many Continental tours. In 1949 he signed a recording contract with EMI and made a string of now much sought -after recordings in the Parlophone Super Rhythm Style series. It was for this company that Humph recorded his own 'Bad Penny Blues' which, in 1956, was the first British jazz record to get into the Top Twenty.
Highspots of that early period include a visit, in 1948, with an all star British band to the first International Jazz Festival in Nice, where he 'sat in' with the likes of Rex Stewart, Jack Teagarden, Earl Hines and Louis Armstrong. In 1956 when Louis Armstrong and his All Stars played in London, Humphrey Lyttelton and his Band were chosen to open the shows. In the late Fifties, Humph shocked many of his fans by enlarging his band and his repertoire to include mainstream and other non-traditional material. The eight-piece band toured the United States successfully in 1959 and led to many fruitful collaborations with other artists.