Roots, radicals and rockers : how skiffle changed the world
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 411-414) and index.

Skiffle ― a “do-it-yourself” music craze with American jazz, blues, folk, and roots influences ― is a story of jazz pilgrims and blues blowers, Teddy Boys and beatnik girls, coffee-bar bohemians and refugees from the McCarthyite witch hunts. Skiffle is reason the guitar came to the forefront of music in the UK and led directly to the British Invasion of the US charts in the 1960s. Emerging from the trad-jazz clubs of the early ’50s, skiffle was adopted by the first generation of British “teenagers” ― working class kids who grew up during the dreary, post-war rationing years. Before Skiffle, the pop culture was dominated by crooners and mediated by a stuffy BBC. Lonnie Donegan hit the charts in 1956 with a version of Lead Belly’s “Rock Island Line” and soon sales of guitars rocketed from 5,000 to 250,000 a year.