Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45478 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 500 pages

Synopsis
From Tommy Steele to Cliff Richard and Billy Fury, the 1950's represented the birth pangs of rock 'n' roll music in the UK. Here for the first time is the authoritative and complete history and social analysis of the era tracing the music's emergence from the primitive experimentation of teenage revolutionaries in the coffee bars of London's Soho to the marketing of the first generation of television idols to the eventual breakthrough of such global stars as The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Writer Pete Frame, one of the few writers to have experienced the highs and lows of that decade first hand, presents the ultimate appraisal of an era previously lost in time. This is the definitive and only book to analyse the 1950s UK pop world. This will become the key text on the era. It ties in with the 50th anniversary of the birth of rock'n'roll music in the UK and contains exclusive and previously unpublished interviews with all the major stars of the period.

Customer Reviews

It all happened in the Fifties
Undoubtedly the best book dealing with the 50's popular music scene. Pleasingly opinionated, it's a compulsive read for the initiated and a revelation for younger generations who think they invented sex and drugs and rock'n'roll. They didn't. We did.

Pete deals with the relatively neglected bands like the seminal Vipers and that extraordinary street band The City Ramblers, as well as all the usual suspects. One caveat is that,as a rock historian he tends to neglect the effect of skiffle on the emergent folk scene of the time. After all both Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick started out as skifflers.But the book is already 500 pages and contains a well researched timeline, as one would expect from Mr Frame.

It catches the feel of the period like no other book of its type and best of all is wonderfully ascerbic in places. This is the Christmas present for anyone with an interest in the popular music or social history of the fifties. A great read and the best of its kind.

When will we get volume two?

John Pilgrim (last survivor of The Vipers.)

British pop before The Beatles
Identifying the roots of British rock had always seemed an uncomplicated matter: didn't it start with the thrillingly spiky electric-guitar intro to `Move It' by Cliff Richard? In this masterful book, which effectively doubles as a post-war history of the new-fangled teenager, Pete Frame demonstrates the fallacy of such assertions.

And what a strange journey it is, leading the reader from riverside pubs in Middlesex circa 1949 to sweaty Soho clubs in the Fifties via countless variety shows and talent contests, protest marches, package tours and even a Louisiana jail. The young Cliff is there, of course, along with Messrs Fury, Faith and Wilde, but the true pioneer, according to the author's meticulous researches and fund of rich anecdotes, was the late, unsung jazz fiend Ken Colyer, who paved the way for the skiffle of Lonnie Donegan et al and later the Old Kent Road-caveman rock of Tommy Steele.

Frame is renowned for the calligraphic majesty of his Rock Family Trees. Here we're reminded that he is a fine writer of a different kind, with a talent for clear narrative thread and refreshing disinclination to pull punches. The opportunistic Donegan, pop svengali Larry Parnes and a frightened, conservative music radio and press come in for stick, although the passion for the classic, authentic music of his youth that informed his editorship of ZigZag permeates all 500 pages.

The only weakness is a lack of pictures - I wanted to see what Colyer and the hep cats who were seeking out great r & b and jazz 78s while I was in nappies looked like. Maybe if we buy enough copies in the run-up to Christmas, a re-print could rectify the situation. Highly recommended.

Well let me tell you baby, its called rock 'n' roll!
To anyone with an interest in social history and popular culture, this book is essential reading. Rock 'n' Roll had a massive impact on me back in 1958, even though I was only 11, because I was influenced by an older brother who was buying all the latest records.

What an incredibly exciting time it was to go from hearing the likes of Eddie Calvert, Alma Cogan and Michael Holiday to Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis etc. I have a memory from back then of coming out of the Saturday morning flicks, and, with a mate plucking up the courage to go into a café in town, where all the Teds hung out. As I walked in, Gene Vincent's `Be-Bop-A-Lula' was blaring out of the jukebox! I was hooked for life.

Written in great detail, with such humour and irreverence, all the excitement of the era is documented here, in this superb book.