Back in late 1971 Hallmark Records issued Volume 19 of their increasingly popular Top Of The Pops cover versions albums, which contained a selection of current and predicted hit singles performed by a group of studio session musicians. Packaging wise they had found their formula on Volume 1; big bold logo (in Cooper), a list of the hits, also quite big and bold, and alongside this a pretty woman.
The Top Of The Pops cover photographs were sometimes chosen from agencies or from specially staged photo shoots (from a studio in Soho!) and this is how on Volume 19 Susan Shaw made her uncredited Top Of The Pops cover debut (many models had a standard non-disclosure clause in their contracts).
It would not be her last and as a much in-demand model there were always new images to be licensed. Indeed Susan did her first modelling shots as early as 1967 under the stage name of Gisa and worked almost non-stop after that for at least a decade. Her most infamous booking was as a live nude model for car makers TVR at a motor show back in the day when this was somehow seen as an acceptable way to try and sell cars.
While her Top Of The Pops sleeves are fairly well known, Susan also appeared on many other sleeves, both for rival chart covers labels, easy listening brass albums and commercial hits collections. Indeed, having spent a little time researching this, it seems to me she may turn out to be the most featured cover girl in Britain of all time. I have seen over two dozen covers she appeared on from all over Europe and if her Top Of The Pops covers are added up that takes it to around 36 sleeves. Indeed her image adorned a new CD of hits over in Australia as recently as 2015 (although she had long since retired), giving her a remarkable 45 year career as a sleeve model!
Sadly Susan died a couple of weeks ago aged 70, with many of the tabloid papers – who had of course themselves been a major user of Susan’s photographs (including the infamous Page 3 girl images in The Sun) – reporting her death. None of them bothered to delve any further into her sleeve work and so I have hunted out a small selection for the site below. There is a section devoted to showing all the Top Of The Pops sleeves on this site.
ST33 