Music of the United Kingdom (1950s and 60s)

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Music of the United Kingdom
Royal Albert Hall, London, a major venue for all forms of music
Timeline
General Topics
Early popular music • 1950s and 60s • 1970s • 1980s • 1990s to present
Genres
Classical • Early music • Folk • Hip Hop • Jazz • Pop • Popular • Rock • Soul
Traditional Forms
Ethnic music	Caribbean • England • Ireland • Scotland • Wales
Traditional music	British folk revival • Ballad • Carol • Children's song • Hornpipe • Jig • Morris dance • Protest song • Reel • Sea shanty • Strathspey • War song • Work song
Media and Performance
Music awards	Mercury • The Brit Awards • Gramophone Awards
Music charts	Singles Chart • Classical Chart • Albums Chart • R&B Chart • Indie Chart • Dance Chart • Rock Chart
Music festivals	Cambridge folk • Download • Edinburgh • Eisteddfodd • Glastonbury • Isle of Wight • Knebworth • Royal National Mod • The Proms • Reading and Leeds • T in the Park • V
Music media	NME • Melody Maker • Mojo • Q • The Wire • The Gramophone
National anthem	"God Save the Queen"
Regional Music
Local forms	Birmingham • Cardiff • Cornwall • Liverpool • Manchester • Northumbria • Somerset • Yorkshire
Other regions	Anguilla • Bermuda • Cayman Islands • Gibraltar • Montserrat • Turks and Caicos • Virgin Islands
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Music of the United Kingdom developed in the 1950s and 60s from being largely insular and derivative to one of leading forms of popular music in the modern world. By 1950 indigenous forms of British popular music, like folk music, brass and silver bands, music hall and dance bands, were already giving way to the influence of American forms of music including jazz, swing and traditional pop, mediated through film and records. The significant change of the mid-1950s was the impact of American rock and roll, which provided a new model for performance and recording, based on a youth market. Initially this was dominated by American acts, or re-creations of American forms of music, but soon distinctly British forms began to appear, first in the uniquely British take on American folk music in the skiffle craze of the 1950s, then in the beginnings of a folk revival that came to place an emphasis on national traditions and then in early attempts to produce British rock and roll. By the early 1960s the British had developed a viable national music industry and began to produce adapted forms of American music in Beat music and British blues which would be re-exported to America by bands such as the Beatles and Rolling Stones. This helped to make the dominant forms of popular music something of a shared Anglo-American creation, and led to the growing distinction between pop and rock music, which began to develop into diverse and creative sub-genres that would characterise the form throughout the rest of the twentieth century.

[edit] Jazz

Jazz reached Britain from America through recordings and performers who visited the country while it was a relatively new genre, soon after the end of World War One. Jazz began to be played by British musicians from the 1930s and on a widespread basis in the 1940s, often within Dance bands. From the late 1950s British "modern jazz", highly influenced by American bebop, began to emerge, led by figures such as John Dankworth and Ronnie Scott, while Ken Colyer, George Webb and Humphrey Lyttelton emphasised New Orleans, trad jazz.^[1] Scott's Soho club became a focal point of British jazz, seeing the best of British and international acts.^[1] From the 1960s British Jazz began to develop more individual characteristics, absorbing a variety of influences, including free jazz, British blues, as well as European and World music.^[1]

[edit] Traditional pop

In the early 1950s sales of American records dominated British popular music. In the first full year of the charts in 1953 major artists were Perry Como, Guy Mitchell and Frankie Laine largely with orchestrated sentimental ballads, beside novelty records like "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" re-recorded by British artist Lita Roza.^[2] Some established British wartime stars like Vera Lynn were still able to chart into the mid-1950s, but successful new British acts like Jimmy Young who had two number one hits in 1955, did so with re-recorded versions of American songs "Unchained Melody" and "The Man from Laramie" or Alma Cogan with "Dreamboat".^[2] Many successful songs were the product of movies, including number ones for Doris Day in 1954 with "Secret Love" from Calamity Jane and for Frank Sinatra with the title song from Three Coins in the Fountain, underlining the dominance of American culture in both film and music at this time, and arguably providing a mechanism for the transference of Rock and roll.^[2]

[edit] Skiffle

Skiffle is a type of folk music with jazz, blues and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments which had originated as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. It became popular again in Britain in the 1950s, where it was associated with musician Lonnie Donegan, whose high-tempo version of Leadbelly's "Rock Island Line" was a major hit in 1956, spending eight months in the Top 20, peaking at #6 (and #8 in the U.S.). It was the first début record to go gold in Britain, selling over a million copies worldwide.^[3] The resulting short-lived Skiffle craze led to a profusion of British performers and played a major part in beginning the careers of later eminent jazz, pop, blues, folk and rock musicians, including early British rock performers Tommy Steele, The Shadows and The Beatles.^[4]

[edit] Folk music and roots revival

The second British folk revival followed a similar American folk music revival, to which it was connected to it by individuals like Alan Lomax, who had moved to Britain in the era of McCarthyism and who worked in England and Scotland.^[5] Like the American revival, it was often overtly left wing in its politics, and the leading figures, the Scottish-born Ewan McColl and A. L. Lloyd, were both involved in trade unionism and socialist politics. In Scotland the key figures were Hamish Henderson and Calum McLean who collected songs and popularised acts including Jeannie Robertson, John Strachan, Flora Macneill and Jimmy MacBeath.^[6] In Wales the key figure was Dafydd Iwan, who founded the Sain record label in 1969.^[7] The revival began to gain momentum in the 1950s with the establishment of a network of folk clubs, like the Blues and Ballads Club in London in 1953 and a number of festivals, like that at Sidmouth from 1955. British folk musicians were heavily influenced by American revival artists like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and later Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. This led indirectly to the sub-genre of British Progressive folk music, pioneered by performers like the Scottish Incredible String Band from 1967 and the distinctive folk baroque guitar style of players like Davy Graham, Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and Bert Jansch.^[8]

[edit] British rock and roll

The emergence of American rock and roll as a major international force in popular music in the mid-1950s led to its emulation in Britain, which shared a common language and many cultural connections.^[9] The British product has generally been considered inferior to the American version of the genre, and made very little international or lasting impact.^[9] However, it was important in establishing British youth and popular music culture and was a key factor in subsequent developments that led to the British Invasion of the mid-1960s. Since the 1960s some stars of the genre, most notably Cliff Richard, have managed to sustain very successful careers and there have been periodic revivals of this form of music.^[9]

[edit] Beat Music

In the late 1950s, a flourishing culture of groups began to emerge, often out of the declining skiffle scene, in major urban centres in the UK like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London. This was particularly true in Liverpool, where it has been estimated that there were around 350 different bands active, often playing ballrooms, concert halls and clubs.^[10] Beat bands were heavily influenced by American bands of the era, such as Buddy Holly and the Crickets (from which group The Beatles derived their name), as well as earlier British groups such as The Shadows.^[11] After the national success of the Beatles in Britain from 1962, a number of Liverpool performers were able to follow them into the charts, including Gerry & The Pacemakers, The Searchers, and Cilla Black. Among the most successful beat acts from Birmingham were The Spencer Davis Group and the The Moody Blues. From London, the term Tottenham Sound was largely based around The Dave Clark Five, but other London bands that benefited from the beat boom of this era included the Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds. The first non-Liverpool, non-Brian Epstein-managed band to break through in the UK were Freddie and the Dreamers, who were based in Manchester,^[12] as were Herman's Hermits and The Hollies.^[13] The beat movement provided most of the bands responsible for the British invasion of the American pop charts in the period after 1964, and furnished the model for many important developments in pop and rock music.

[edit] British blues boom

In parallel with Beat music, in the late 1950s and early 1960s a British blues scene was developing recreating the sounds of American R&B and later particularly the sounds of bluesmen Robert Johnson, Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters. It reached its height of mainstream popularity in the 1960s, when it developed a distinctive and influential style dominated by electric guitar and made international stars of several proponents of the genre including The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, The Yardbirds, Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin. A number of these moved through blues-rock to different forms of rock music and as a result British blues helped to form many of the sub-genres of rock, including psychedelic rock and heavy metal music. Since then direct interest in the blues in Britain has declined, but many of the key performers have returned to it in recent years, new acts have emerged and there have been a renewed interest in the genre.^[14]

[edit] British Invasion

On 7 February 1964 The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite ran a story about The Beatles' United States arrival in which the correspondent said "The British Invasion this time goes by the code name Beatlemania"^[15] A few days later they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Seventy five percent of Americans watching television that night viewed their appearance thus "launching"^[16] the invasion with a massive wave of chart success that would continue until they broke up in 1970. On 4 April 1964 the Beatles held the top 5 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, the only time to date that any act has accomplished this feat.^[17][16] During the next two years, Peter and Gordon, The Animals, Manfred Mann, Petula Clark, Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Herman’s Hermits, The Rolling Stones, The Troggs, and Donovan would have one or more number one singles.^[18] Other acts that were part of the invasion included The Who, The Kinks, and The Dave Clark Five.^[16] British Invasion acts influenced fashion, haircuts and manners of the 1960s of what was to be known as The Counterculture. In particular the Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night and fashions from Carnaby Street led American media to proclaim England as the centre of the music and fashion world.^[18] The success of British acts of the time caused American garage rock bands subsequently to change their sound and style. The influence continued on subsequent groups such as Big Star, Sparks and Todd Rundgren amongst others.^[19] The emergence of relatively homogeneous worldwide rock music styles about 1967 marked the end of the "invasion".^[18]

[edit] Psychedelic music

Psychedelic music is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of hallucinogenic drugs.^[20] It particularly grew out of blues-rock and progressive folk music and drew on non-Western sources such as Indian music's ragas and sitars as well as studio effects and long instrumental passages and surreal lyrics. It emerged during the mid 1960s among progressive folk bands in Britain and the United States and rapidly moved into rock and pop music being taken up by acts including the Beatles, The Yardbirds, Cream and Pink Floyd. Psychedelic rock bridged the transition from early blues-rock to progressive rock, art rock, experimental rock, hard rock and eventually heavy metal that would become major genres in the 1970s.^[21]

[edit] Pop music

Around 1967, in the aftermath of the British Invasion, as blues-rock, emerging folk rock and some beat bands, including the Beatles, veered towards a more serious forms of music, with an emphasis on meaning, virtuosity and orientated towards the albums market, the term pop music began to be applied to rock and roll based music with more commercial aims, often with inconsequential lyrics, particularly simple love songs, and orientated towards the singles chart, continuing the tradition of traditional pop.^[22] Although some bands occupied territory that crossed the emerging rock/pop divide and were able to produce successes in both camps, including the Beatles and Rolling Stones, the British pop genre in the late 1960s would be dominated by individual singers like Engelbert Humperdinck and Sandie Shaw, who both had number one single hits in 1967.^[23]

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• Early British popular music
• Music of the United Kingdom (1970s)
• Music of the United Kingdom (1980s)
• Music of the United Kingdom (1990s-2000s)