Christine Cooper

Christine Cooper - SOS (Heart In Distress) 1965
This was a Northern soul floor filler of the early 70's especially at the Catacombs Club in Wolverhampton. I was amazed to find this shaky footage of her from when it came out! Love the guys on the boat/dock sending the SOS signal with flags. There is also a nice version of this by Teri Nelson Group on Kama Sutra records. In that group was a Betty Cooper, Christine's sister I wonder?

This £20 record was produced like her later other two Parkway singles Heartaches Away My Boy (that fetches £200) by Super K Productions a 1960's American recording production company, headed by producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffrey Katz, whose groups specialized in bubblegum pop. Their biggest successes were The Ohio Express, The 1910 Fruitgum Company, Crazy Elephant and The Music Explosion. This single like the other thousand or more titles on the labels (Cameo-Parkway) have not been re-issued on cd.

Super K also had their own label of the same name in 1969, but it did not last as the bubblegum genre had already started to decline in popularity. Not a company to depend on double-sided hits, many (but not all) Super K-produced singles were pressed with B-sides of either tracks recorded backwards or studio group instrumentals. This method was also employed earlier by producers Phil Spector and Joe Meek as a way of pointing a radio DJ to the "right" side of the singles.