Billy Bragg

Back in the early 2000s when working on the Before They Were Beatles book I did research into the roots of skiffle and its impact on the British music scene in the 1950s, but there wasn’t much around. I wish I’d had this volume, but as Bragg says skiffle had, unfairly, pretty much written out of popular rock histories. That was an oversight he set out to correct here - and he succeeded.

The three years of the British skiffle craze was in many ways an antecedent of the punk explosion of the 70s with its boundary breaking imperative to just get out there and make music.

Bragg’s book examines it all in great detail, and for some that may be too much detail as there is a long list of names* and references that would probably be unfamiliar to the casual reader not already versed in the foundations of the British music scene. It also has a London bias (partially understandable as that’s where skiffle originated and remained its epicenter) only really spelling out its broader influences in the last few chapters. An influence that informed almost every British pop and rock act of the 60s and 70s.

If you want to know the true roots of modern British rock than this is a great starting point.

(* One name that took me by surprise was that of Michael Moorcock - apparently the renowned SF writer produced his own skiffle fanzine as a teenager.)… (more)

I received this book as part of the Early Reviewers program at LibraryThing.

I enjoyed this book more than most i've read in the past few years. Bragg has a very accessible style as he goes through the history of Skiffle music in the UK. From it's beginnings in American Blues and Folk music as filtered through tradition Jazz in England, Skiffle went on to shake a nation and spawn what we know as early Rock 'n' Roll, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison and all the others.

Bragg's work is filled with very interesting, interrelated information and name calls many, many obscure and famous bands. Part of the fun of reading this was following along with my Amazon Prime music an listening to all this great music I never knew existed.

If you have any interest in the history of music, you must must must get a copy of this book. It's pretty awesome!! I don't give five stars often; this one deserves it.… (more)

Billy Bragg, perhaps best known in the States for his work recording unrecorded Woody Guthrie songs with Wilco, has written what is perhaps the definitive history of the short-lived but hugely influential musical genre known as skiffle. From its roots in traditional New Orleans jazz, combined with American folk and blues, an oddly unique British melange of American musical styles was created. Playing on essentially whatever instruments they could find (as long as one was a guitar), a sort of proto-garage rock was created.

Bragg methodically traces these roots, which all seemed to come together into the person of Lonnie Donegan - and his copycats, who thousands of British musical wannabes tried to emulate. After a few years of success, Donegan slipped into irrelevance by recording novelty songs, but one of those wannabe bands, The Quarrymen, morphed into The Beatles and changed popular music. Other wannabe skifflers followed their lead and became known, in America at least, as the British Invasion (Stones, The Who, et.al.)

I highly recommend this book, although it can get bogged down in the details from time to time. I created a Spotify playlist of many of the songs discussed within, if you wish to listen as you read: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6A7IkYc3feSZU06JH6cybH?si=vQbJNTp3Rqu_TkPaD_QG...… (more)