Name: Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World
Brand: Billy Bragg

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

9780571327744

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Colour

Discs

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format Books GB

Hardback

Format detail

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Limited edition

Release date

2017-06-01

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Faber

Tax rate GB

UPC / Barcode

1 / Extended format: No / Hardback / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Billy Bragg

Genre GB

Music

Label GB

<a href="https://roughtrade.com/gb/artist/billy-bragg">Billy Bragg</a>, the bard of Barking, returns with<i> Roots, Radicals &amp; Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World,</i> the first book to explore this phenomenon in depth - a meticulously researched and joyous account that explains how skiffle sparked a revolution that shaped pop music as we have come to know it.

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. Billy traces how 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 kids who growing up during the dreary, post-war rationing years. These were Britain's first teenagers, looking for a music of their own in a pop culture dominated by crooners and mediated by a stuffy BBC. Lonnie Donegan hit the charts in 1956 with a version of 'Rock Island Line' and soon sales of guitars rocketed from 5,000 to 250,000 a year.

Like punk rock that would flourish two decades later, skiffle was a do-it-yourself music. All you needed were three guitar chords and you could form a group, with mates playing tea-chest bass and washboard as a rhythm section

This is the story of how the first generation of British teenagers changed our pop music from being jazz-based to guitar-led.

Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World

Books GB