John Schroeder
b. 1935, London, England. Schroeder became assistant to EMI's Columbia label chief Norrie Paramor in 1958. His first production was Sing Little Birdie by Pearl Carr & Teddy Johnson, which finished second in the Eurovision Song Contest in the following year. Subsequently Schroeder supervised recording sessions by numerous Columbia artists including Cliff Richard and the Shadows. In 1961, he discovered the 14-year-old Helen Shapiro and when Paramor could find no suitable material for her, Schroeder wrote his first song and her first hit, Please Don't Treat Me Like A Child. A subsequent Shapiro song, Walking Back To Happiness won the Ivor Novello award for Schroeder and co-writer Mike Hawker. He next spent two years as label manager for Oriole, the UK's only significant independent record company. There he produced hits by Marion Evans, Clinton Ford and Swedish instrumental group the Spotniks. Oriole was also the first British label to issue material from Berry Gordy's Tamla Motown labels. Schroeder left Oriole shortly before it was purchased by CBS to become head of Pye Records’ Piccadilly label. There, he had immediate success with the Rockin' Berries, the Ivy League and Sounds Orchestral, an instrumental studio group he formed with keyboards player Johnny Pearson who had a major success in 1965 with the lilting Cast Your Fate To The Wind. Schroeder and Pearson went on to record 14 Sounds Orchestral albums and were planning to revive the group in the early '90s. During a seven year tenure with Pye, he wrote for and produced artists as diverse as Status Quo, Geno Washington and Shapiro. For a period during the '70s, Schroeder ran his own Alaska Records whose roster included Afro-rock band Cymande, rock ‘n’ roll revivalists Flying Saucers and Joy Sarney, whose Naughty Naughty Naughty was a minor hit in 1977. Schroeder was also a pioneer in the video business before moving to Vancouver, Canada in 1978 where he was active throughout the '80s as an independent producer.