This is probably the best single CD of
Helen Shapiro's chart records, and the best overview of her career, encompassing as it does the best parts of eight of her extended-play singles -- all of her hits and her best B-sides and album tracks.
Shapiro's singing is extraordinary -- at 15, she was crooning standards like "St. Louis Blues" and "Birth of the Blues" with the assurance and depth of feeling of a 40-year-old of a generation earlier. Hearing this material, and all of
Shapiro's hits, it's easy to understand how she could have been a major pop music figure in early-'60s England, and difficult to comprehend the missteps by her label that prevented her from sustaining that career.