This second set of predominantly twangy and/or keyboards-driven toons concentrates largely on 1962, with just a couple of hands full of goodies left over from 1960/61 which were omitted from Vol.1 due to lack of space. Ultimately, there are far too many artists included here to discuss them all. The Dave Clark Five, Tony Hatch…

The Very Best Of British Rock ‘n’ Roll Rock & Roll got off to a fairly slow, low-key start in the UK, and it peaked late; indeed, it would take a couple of years before we got the collective bit between our teeth, the first genuine classic British R&R record (Cliff’s ‘Move It’, of course)…

Great British Songwriters British songwriters only really started to come into their own during the latter half of the 1950s, commensurate with the arrival of Rock & Roll and the gradual development of a genuine home-grown scene (i.e. as opposed to the ‘manufactured’ version which the music/record industry had earlier tried to foist upon us). …

The Rise Of Black Music In Britain In 1948, the Empire Windrush famously docked at Tilbury, carrying 493 passengers from Jamaica and Trinidad (plus, by all accounts, one stowaway!).  Pathe News were among the media gathered there to meet them, and a remarkable piece of newsreel footage survives in which the freshly disembarked King Of…

The Very Best Of British Trad Jazz Coming along, as it did, almost directly on the heels of Skiffle and Rock & Roll, Trad was perhaps the least likely Pop Music phenomenon of the era. Yet for a brief spell at the end of the 50s and the very early 60s, it was massively popular…

Early Brit Girls Vol. 1 Although the arrival of the archetypical 60s ‘dolly bird’ was still a couple of years away, by the turn of that decade a whole ‘new look’ Brit Girl was emerging; a slim, wan, wide-eyed young gazelle, the polar opposite of the overtly glam, well-upholstered, tightly-corseted, frilly-petticoated, severely made-up filly of…

  click sleeve to BUY The Birth Of British Beat Boom Received wisdom would have us believe that The 60s began in Liverpool in 1963, commensurate with the arrival of The Beatles and the ensuing British Beat Boom.  Well, that’s certainly the romantic view, but the seeds of the Beat Boom had been sewn a…

Many years ago we collaborated with friends and produced this fine documentary about the Sixties Counter Culture. You will see it sometimes on Sky Arts and you can also BUY it on DVD. If you want to see a trailor, just click on this cover image. This release is coded as territory zero/PAL.   The title is…

With the notable exception of the mighty Jack Good, Larry Parnes was very probably the most important non-performing figure in the history of UK Rock’n’Roll. Indeed, without Parnes (and certainly, without Good!) UK R’n’R would have been an entirely different proposition… one which hardly bears contemplating!!! Generally speaking, success owes everything to good luck and…

The History Of Skiffle Looking back from the comfort zone of the hi-tech/centrally-heated/24-7/anything-goes 21st Century, it’s virtually impossible to convey just how big an impact Skiffle Music made on the austere cultural wasteland that was 1950s Britain. For starters, those rose-tinted spectacles which we tend to don when reviewing our childhood are a genuinely effective…

The UK Instro Scene 1956-61 The “Golden Age” of the UK R&R/Beat Instrumental occurred very roughly between the late 50s and the very early 60s, peaking in 1961 on the back of The Shadows’ monumental breakthrough the previous year with the chart-topping ‘Apache’ (which spent five or six weeks at No.1, depending on which weekly…