You will easily find more thorough and explanative descriptions than I will give but for those who need a overview here is a very basic rundown of musical genres, fashions and a few key dates in Britain through the 20th century. Many genres run concurrently, many continue running while dropping out of the limelight, many are debatable and all have blurred edges and the closer you look into these styles the further you can dissect them but it may help to see the bigger picture and how they fit together. Some musicians stay with their style, some move with the times some sit outside the preconceived expectations and every time we try to prove a point a good counter argument can be offered but nevertheless….
At the turn of the twentieth century there was the classical tradition with orchestral, chamber and operatic music. Also church music, military bands and choirs. Folk music both rural and industrial with its ballads, sea shanties, children’s songs, carols, and street cries some with long forgotten roots still remained being passed on from generation to generation.
The music hall tradition was in full swing with popular songs and the beginnings of a what we would understand as a “hit song”. “Champagne Charlie” written in 1866 is an example of a music hall hit. Music hall was a very British thing starting in back rooms of pubs in the early/mid 19th century and having roots even further back and was aimed at a working class audience with typical cockney “knees up” type songs.
As it grew music hall theatres were built to accomodate the larger crowds and as the songs shook off their folk origins they began to become associated with the singers and writers. As British singers went to America to ply their trade on the Vaudeville circuit so American artists and their songs appeared here and before the first world war the influence of jazz and ragtime had started to take over and by the end of the war in 1918 music hall had dwindled and modern-day variety shows began.
When the “Original Dixieland Jazz Band” came to our shores from America in 1919 it marked the start of Jazz in Britain and with the advent of recording and radio the post first world war landscape was changing and the rise of “big band” dance music became the dominant sound from the 1920’s through to the 1940’s with the “British swing scene” of the 1930’s a form of jazz that was very popular. In the 1940’s there began a movement towards “modern jazz” or Bebop and Johnny Dankworth and Ronnie Scott were Brits who went with the new direction.
The American influence was strong and that was to be increased during and after the second world war. The growth of cinema brought American country music to the attention of the public and the Broadway musicals provided yet more hit material. The British jazz scene had a growing trad jazz movement in the late forties and early fifties but a better remembered trad jazz boom was during the late fifties which payed homage to the original New Orleons dixie jazz that originated in the late 1890’s. George Melly, Acker Bilk, Alex Welsh, Kenny Ball, Ken Colyer and most notabaly Chris Barber were main players on the scene but it was Chris whose influence is most felt during the fifties in Britain.
He launched Lonnie Donegan’s career who went on to record “Rock Island Line” which started the extremely popular Skiffle scene. He also introduced many Black blues artists to a British audience and can be seen as a father of the British Blues Boom which would develop in the 1960’s with the likes of the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. Skiffle was an archaic form of folk, jazz and blues played with homemade instruments that the British youth took to with a vengence. Little of it was recorded but it was the starting point for many artists that we know of today most famously The Beatles.
At the same time as Skiffle, Rock and Roll burst onto the scene with Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Bill Haley and Chuck Berry heralding a new and exciting sound which had grown slowly in America combining R’n’B, Country, Blues, Gospel and Jazz. From this explosion, skiffle and the rest of the entertainment industry grew the British Rock and Roll movement of the late 1950’s. Cliff Richard and the Shadows were an major force at the time and their “Move it” can be considered the first genuine piece of British Rock and Roll. Sub cultures grew incuding Teddy Boys and Rockers. The single “Shakin all over” recorded by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates in 1960 can be considered the first Rock and Roll classic from our island. The pop charts which started in the early fifties were complimented by the first British television programme for youth music which was launched in 1957 and Rock and Roll in general can be seen as the first teenage culture.
At the same time in the Britain of the 1950’s a folk revivalist movement was in full swing running alongside the skiffle craze with gatherings in coffee bars as a beatnik with a guitar would sing the songs of American Hank Williams or more likely escape from the American influence and find and redefine traditional British folk music.
As the 1960’s dawned there was a healthy musical melting pot in Britain waiting for the right time to break out. It won’t suprise many to know that the synthesis of this brew was the explosion that was “The Beatles” spearheading the beat music movement. To say they influened and changed everything is an understatement. Their impact is immeasurable. In a change of politic they were a group with no leader, a sum of their parts, unlike the groups before them who had always been for example “Joe Bloggs and the So and So’s”. As Beatlemania took hold in 1963, the war, rationing and national service were now a thing of the past to a new teenage generation who had money, a new found voice and the future beckoned like it had never before. Youth culture was well and truly born.
Beat music was the rage for a couple of years but with the growing British Blues scene and the introduction of soul and Tamla Motown British rhythm and blues developed. Many of the great British groups of the sixties used this as a launchpad for their careers. The Beatles, The Stones, The Animals, The Who, The Zombies and many more became known as the “British Invasion” because in a strange twist of fate it was these groups who conquered America and gave back “their” music to them. While there had been undoubted racial problems in Britain, music was not a battleground if anything it was a redeemer. However, in America with segregation, the predominat white youth were unaware of this great American music and they were enthralled by this vibrant mixture of danceable songs coming to them from little old Britain.
The Mod movement in Britain was a genuine case of teenagers escaping their parents, peers and anyone else in their way. By the mid sixties you could write a role call of musical genres all fighting for favour. The first protoype rock groups, pop groups, soul bands and folk singers. The black community who had arrived from the Carribean in the fifties bringing with them Calypso now had “Ska” as a danceable club music. Many groups who flirted with pop stardom would settle back and tour the clubland circuit playing the welfares and clubs making a living entertaining the working masses. The recording industry was in full swing, gigs were a plenty and it was boom time for playing musicians. All the afformentioned styles of old still had their audience and the modern music scene, changing almost overnight, was becoming a powerful medium.
When the psychedelic music of 1967 appeared, The Beatles released Sgt Pepper, Jimi Hendrix was the shining light of London and the hippy movement took hold, the divide between the young and old had never been so great. Psychedelia wasn’t like jazz, blues or rock and pop music but rather a hybrid of effects, other worldly sounds and mysterious lyrics which could be attached to any style of music. Some of the establishment were disturbed and distanced by this music like they never had been before and as drugs, which have always been around, were now an open secret the battle lines were drawn. As psychedelia wasn’t a musical genre in itself it affected many recognised styles and changed them producing new forms of folk, rock, pop and jazz. At this time the new experimental outlook found partners in the avant garde composers and musicians who been creating strange happenings since the 1950’s and with the take over of the album as the prefered medium the short song was now not the only way to voice your thoughts or express your feelings. Teenage music was growing up and in many ways this sixties template has survived through to today.
DJ’s were playing in clubs, great festivals of music became the new gatherings of the masses, the new electrical instruments had become affordable, the music business was taking shape and Britain was at the forefront of the musical revolution. The late sixties saw the birth of the great rock bands, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. Emerging styles in the early 1970’s of fusion, jazz rock, progressive rock, symphonic rock and singer song writers produced institutions like Pink Floyd, Elton John, Mike Oldfield and Genesis while the more chart based music had the early seventies Glam-Rock scene with T-Rex, Slade, David Bowie and Roxy Music. Folk Rock blossomed. Cosmic rock grew with Hawkwind and Gong at the helm. Reggae music was distilled from ska and rock-steady and with the arrival of Bob Marley to Britain became another well loved style. During the mid seventies straight forward rock and r’n’b bands still played the clubs and pubs becoming known as the “pub rock” movement, a predecessor to punk. The German influence took root in Britain with Kraftwerk, Can and Tangerine Dream highlighting the synthesisor and new beats that weren’t derived from America. The Funk music of America which hadn’t impacted that strongly in Britain eventually morphed into Disco and that did sweep in. As all this growing up of music happened a swathe of now rightly considered works of art were recorded and have left their mark many that are still unrivalled today. A new generation in the middle of the seventies emerged and kicked out the old with a return to the 3 minute song, no fuss playing and stick it to the man attitude. In 1977 while Soul, Disco and Rock happily carried on Punk threw out new leaders with The Sex Pistols, The Stranglers, The Clash and The Damned. Reggae became more and more dub. New Wave took root in 1978 and 1979 with The Police and Blondie.
Here is a much more substantial look at the Rise and Fall of Popular Music.