Roots, radicals and rockers : how skiffle changed the world / Billy Bragg

Includes bibliographical references and index

The Rock Island Line -- Ration book jazz -- Blues in brass -- Pilgrimage to New Orleans -- Back to basics -- What kind of music are they playing? -- Stumbling towards a new dawn -- The new Edwardians -- The highbrow of swing -- Will TV kill the British Sunday? -- Sunshine on Soho -- Red scare refugees -- Skiffle artificial -- The adventures of an Irish hillbilly -- Youth in revolt -- The people's music -- Here's three chords -- Lonnie opens the door -- Going so fast -- This'll make you skiffle -- Country, bluegrass, and blues -- Expresso bongo -- For peace and harmony -- Skiffle on the skids -- Maximum R & B -- The British are coming.

Emerging from the jazz clubs of the early 1950s, skiffle - a uniquely British take on American folk and blues - caused a sensation among a generation of kids who had grown up during the dreary post-war years. These were Britain's first teenagers, looking for a music of their own in a culture dominated by crooners and mediated by a stuffy BBC. Sales of guitars rocketed from 5,000 to 250,000 a year, and - as with the punk rock that would flourish two decades later - all you needed to know were three guitar chords to form your own group, with your mates accompanying on tea-chest bass and washboard. Against a backdrop of Cold War politics, rock and roll riots and a newly assertive working-class youth, Billy Bragg charts - for the first time in depth - the history, impact and legacy of Britain's original pop movement. It's a story of jazz pilgrims and blues blowers, Teddy Boys and beatnik girls, coffee-bar bohemians and refugees from the McCarthyite witch-hunts, who between them sparked a revolution that shaped pop culture as we have come to know it.

English