Decline, Renewal and the City in Popular Music Culture: Beyond the Beatles

Sara Cohen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351160186
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

How is popular music culture connected with the life, image, and identity of a city? How, for example, did the Beatles emerge in Liverpool, how did they come to be categorized as part of Liverpool culture and identity and used to develop and promote the city, and how have connections between the Beatles and Liverpool been forged and contested? This book explores the relationship between popular music and the city using Liverpool as a case study. Firstly, it examines the impact of social and economic change within that city on its popular music culture, focusing on de-industrialization and economic restructuring during the 1980s and 1990s. Secondly, and in turn, it considers the specificity of popular music culture and the many diverse ways in which it influences city life and informs the way that the city is thought about, valued and experienced. Cohen highlights popular music's unique role and significance in the making of cities, and illustrates how de-industrialization encouraged efforts to connect popular music to the city, to categorize, claim and promote it as local culture, and harness and mobilize it as a local resource. In doing so, she adopts an approach that recognizes music as a social and symbolic practice encompassing a diversity of roles and characteristics: music as a culture or way of life distinguished by social and ideological conventions; music as sound; speech and discourse about music; and music as a commodity and industry.

Chapter 1
Music and the City: Cultural Diversity in a Global Cosmopolis

The Liverpool Ladies’ Barbershop Chorus are in mid rehearsal in the back room of a pub, which is located on the leafy edge of an expansive park in Liverpool’s southern suburbs. We are filming the chorus for an exhibition that will be staged by the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside. Three tiers of women stretch out in front of us, spanning different generations. Every now and then they sway from side to side or lean inwards. Their hand movements are carefully co-ordinated and their faces animated and expressive, but they relax and break into smiles and laughter whenever the conductor interrupts their singing to offer comment and guidance. They pause for a break and Margaret Blackman rushes across the room to greet us, and calls over her sisters, Bette and Lesley, so that she can introduce them to us. Two other sisters, Geraldine and Terry, also perform with the chorus but are not at today’s rehearsal, as does Margaret’s daughter, Rachel. Rachel comes over and explains to us that her father, Joe, is rehearsing that night with the men’s barbershop chorus in a different Liverpool venue. She is interrupted every now and then by Margaret, who continues to point out to us particular members of the chorus and their family connections. It is a lot to take in so we ask Margaret to tell us more about her immediate family.

Margaret’s story begins with her father, Jack Blackman, and the music lessons that his mother sent him to when he was growing up in Liverpool as a young boy. Every Saturday morning she would ‘pledge a parcel’ in order to raise the money to pay for those lessons. During the mid-1950s Jack sent his own children to music lessons and established a family jazz band, named Jack Blackman and the Black Keys. The band featured his wife Elizabeth on piano, himself on alto sax and clarinet, and his daughters Bette and Margaret on drums and vocals. Another daughter, Lesley, was also part of the band before she joined the local country and western group Lee and the Strollers. We record as much of Margaret’s story as we can before leaving the chorus and driving to Chinatown in Liverpool city centre for our next appointment. There, the street names are written in both English and Chinese characters, and tall and shabby Georgian terraced buildings are brightened up with gaudy neon restaurant signs. Concealed behind those terraces are quiet residential backstreets and a square that houses the Chinese Gospel Church, which runs a choir and music workshops. At the corner of the square stands the Pagoda Chinese Community Centre, an oriental-style building where we are due to film next. Inside, members of the Liu family are rehearsing with Liverpool’s Chinese classical youth orchestra.

What can the Blackman and Liu families tell us about the relationship between music and the city? How are barbershop and traditional Chinese music connected to the social and economic life of Liverpool and to its history and geography? In order to begin to answer such questions, I must first of all situate Liverpool’s popular music culture within a broader and more historical context, considering, Liverpool’s emergence as a city, its rise to prominence as a global cosmopolis and the impact of this on the city’s musical life. In particular, the discussion will focus on how Liverpool’s musical life was affected by the development of the city’s port, the city’s status as a place of migration and its American connections. It will draw upon a study of music and kinship on Merseyside, introducing case material on families involved with various musical genres and styles.¹ The chapter will end, however, by drawing attention to music’s role and significance in producing rather than just reflecting the city, and by relating that process to the book’s key aims and themes.

Musical Diversity and the Gateway to Empire

Tony and Beryl Davis live on the Wirral, an area of Merseyside that lies across the River Mersey from Liverpool. When they talked to us about the role and significance of music in their individual and family lives, and about the musical life of the region more generally, they were keen to emphasize the influence of the sea and the port. Liverpool was granted a Borough Charter in 1207, but it remained a small Atlantic-facing coastal settlement with a population of only a few hundred until the construction of the Old Dock of 1715. This was one of the world’s first wet docks and it enabled Liverpool to develop and rapidly expand as a trading port strung out along the length of the River Mersey. Through the port Liverpool became a central player within the global economy and a ‘Gateway of Empire’ (Lane, 1987), and this had a profound impact on the city’s economic, social and musical life.² Liverpool’s folk traditions, for example, are rich and diverse and cannot be reduced to the port and port culture; but they have been described as ‘more surf than turf in flavour’ (Du Noyer, 2002: 53), and they do illustrate a long-standing interest within the city in songs and instruments connected with the sea and with seafaring culture.

Beryl Davis had published various magazines and articles on folk and sea music but she also played various instruments, including the concertina, an instrument traditionally played by sailors.³ Her husband Tony was also a musician. During the 1940s and 1950s he performed with various local groups, including the Muskrat Jazz Band and the Gin Mill skiffle group. Yet he was best known as a member of the Spinners, a folk group from Liverpool that formed in 1954 and were particularly popular in Britain during the 1970s when they performed both classic and new folk songs on national television. When we first met Tony he was running the region’s annual international sea-shanty festival, and he introduced us to Jack Coutes, who performed with Storm-a-long-John, a local group of around 12 or so shanty singers. Shanties were sung on local clipper ships for around 30 years during the mid-1800s and were passed down by local dockers (Hugill, 1969). Some of the songs of Merseyside rock musicians, such as the rock band The Coral, have been regarded as being influenced by sea shanties,⁴ whilst the Beatles performed the sea shanty ‘Maggie May’ during their earlier incarnation as The Quarrymen.⁵ Jack Coutes had been involved with Liverpool folk music since the early 1960s when the city had around 20 folk clubs, partly due to the folk revival of the mid- to late 1950s. By the time we met Jack, however, that number had dwindled and only two clubs remained (Jack Coutes, p.c.).

As a result of its west-facing position and the development of its port, Liverpool began to play a central role within national and international trade and transportation networks. As the city developed trading links with Europe, America, the West Indies, India, China and Africa, it expanded outwards from the central waterfront area and gradually incorporated surrounding villages within its boundaries. That expansion was encouraged by the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, which enabled the transfer of people and commodities. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Liverpool had taken over from Bristol as the leader of the ‘triangular’ slave trade. Manufactured goods from inland cities were transported to Liverpool and loaded onto ships bound for West Africa, where they were exchanged for human slaves who were taken into forced plantation labour in the colonies of the New World. In return, cotton, rum, sugar and tobacco from the New World were shipped back to Liverpool. Liverpool consequently became Britain’s ‘second city’ and a major centre for commerce. ‘At its, peak, the port provided direct employment for perhaps as many as 60,000 people, and almost the same number of people were employed in processing and manufacturing industries that depended upon the port’s commodities, such as timbre, cable, latex, tobacco, sugar etc’ (Lane, 1987: 35). Liverpool was thus a city that developed and expanded through trade, including not just port-related trade but also smaller trades and businesses – such as the highly specialized watch- and clock-making industry that emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century and was at its height in the middle of the nineteenth (Hall, 1998: 338). Local industries also developed around the building and repair of ships.

Liverpool’s wealth, and its status in a national and global context, encouraged the development of rich and diverse local musical cultures. The city became a stopping-off point for sailors, traders, tourists and touring musicians, and it was thus exposed to international musical influences, becoming a place where different social and musical groups met and musical sounds and styles were exchanged. Liverpool has had a strong and long-standing tradition in street music, for example, involving local and visiting musicians. Miriam Collings, who was 74 years old when we met her, had vivid childhood memories of the songs of the street sellers and the music of the foofoo bands that paraded around playing simple instruments such as biscuit-tin drums and the ‘kazoo’ made out of comb and tissue paper (Cohen and McManus, 1991: 17). Unwin (1983: 60) notes that ‘members of the ships’ crews also had their foo-foo bands which provided plenty of entertainment for passengers and the members of the bands alike.’ Describing a visit to Liverpool in 1839, the novelist Herman Melville comments on the music emanating from boarding houses, the songs of seamen and strolling musicians playing hand-organs, fiddles and cymbals (quoted in Du Noyer, 2002: 1). Other writers have described the singers, banjoists and concertina players that entertained Liverpool theatre and cinema queues during the 1930s (Shaw, 1971: 34; Unwin, 1983: 97); the sheet-music pedlars selling popular songs for a penny (Unwin, ibid.: 233); the barrel organs that ‘drew youngsters like bees round a jam pot’; the buskers who jammed into the pub doorways playing ‘battered old banjos or mandolins’; and the local unemployed men who hired instruments for the day from a shop in St Anne Street and dressed up in drag, touring the city and busking in groups of four (ibid.: 94).

A wealth of other entertainment facilities and resources emerged to cater for city visitors as well as locals, including different kinds of venues for live music performance. Local reports and surveys have highlighted a long-standing prevalence within the city of clubs, societies and other organizations devoted to music or involved in the promotion of music performance, and many of those who participated in our study on music and kinship were involved with such organizations. Barrow, writing about the Liverpool of 1756–83, comments on the city’s ‘highly developed network of clubs’ (1925: 136), whilst a prevalence of local music clubs is noted in the Liverpool Review of 18 November 1899. The city’s wealth of clubs and venues for music, dancing and singing is also highlighted in later reports,⁶ thus Jones (1934: 284) states ‘There is in Liverpool no lack of societies and organizations giving musical performances. Some years ago, indeed, there was probably a superfluity of such institutions.’

The grandeur of some of those societies and venues reflected Liverpool’s wealth and status. The city boasted, for example, prominent concert halls – such as the Royal Philharmonic Hall, which opened in 1849⁷ – as well as numerous orchestras and societies for classical and choral music. The latter included the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra that was administered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society (RLPS) and gave its first public performance on 12 March 1840.⁸ During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Liverpool could boast not just an impressive number of concert halls but also many notable music halls; and several of those who participated in our study had relatives who had been involved with music hall as performers, promoters or managers. The halls were targeted at all social classes, including working and upper classes, and they promoted a broad and diverse range of acts. On 20 August 1864, for example, the advertisements on the back page of the Liverpool Era included those for the Vine Hotel Concert Hall, featuring ‘the celebrated Walton family’ and ‘the great Irish vocalist’ Paddy Doyle; the American Opera House, featuring ‘the celebrated comic vocalist W.H. Morgan, the ‘great Ethiopian serenaders Hildebrandt and Ormonde, ‘sensation vocalist’ Mr Robert Frazer and Mr Thomas, ‘basso-profunda’; and Scott’s Royal Music Hall, featuring the eleventh week of performances by the Alabama Sisters: ‘the black sisterhood have already acquired a widespread fame in the delineation of “nigger” character, and the songs and dances of the newest and most attractive styles’.⁹ Some of those halls and some local theatres attracted the most successful entertainers of the time, including the well-known female drag artist Vesta Tilley, who married a Liverpool theatrical entrepreneur named Walter de Frece (Maitland, 1986); the US vaudeville entertainer Sophie Tucker, who appeared at the Empire in July 1934 (Unwin, 1983: 73); and the great violinist Paganini, who performed at the Liver Theatre in 1833.¹⁰

The popularity of music hall in Liverpool encouraged the later development of music theatre in the city. During the 1930s and 1940s local comics such as Arthur Askey and Tommy Trinder became famous for performances that drew upon music hall and helped to promote the city’s strong reputation for comedy. However, some local music halls eventually became cinemas, which were a source of employment for many local musicians until the arrival of talking film. The Olympia, for example, was built as a music hall in 1905 but it became Liverpool’s first cinema in 1925. On 23 January 1929 it screened ‘the Singing Fool’ featuring Al Jolson, which was the first talking film to be heard in Liverpool (Unwin, 1983: 183). Eighty-seven-year-old Jack Levy told us what it felt like to see that film shortly after its first screening in the city, and how inspired he had been by the characters and their musical performance, which had reminded him of his own life in Liverpool as the son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants (Cohen, 1998). He, like so many other people we spoke to, also reminisced with great fondness about the dance halls of his youth. Liverpool housed a wealth of such halls in addition to its music halls and cinemas. They included ornate ballrooms such as the Grafton, where numerous dance and swing acts performed during the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Like Glasgow – a city with similar social, economic and cultural characteristics – Liverpool has a strong and long-standing tradition in dance culture, and by the mid-1920s, according to Unwin (1983: 204), the city was ‘recognised as one of the leading centres of ballroom dancing outside London’.

Liverpool’s role as a port brought the city not just wealth but also severe poverty and striking divisions between rich and poor. Unlike large industrial cities such as nearby Manchester, Liverpool had little manufacturing industry, and the city’s port activity was dependent upon an extensive and generally unskilled labour force. Fluctuations in trade and the casualized nature of much dockside labour brought chronic unemployment and deprivation to the city’s working classes, most of whom lived in squalid and unhealthy conditions. The city consequently became a national pioneer in social reform and welfare provision, and in the establishment of organizations aiming to entertain the unemployed (Jones, 1934: 314). It was in Liverpool that the free concerts for the poor were first launched during the second half of the nineteenth century (ibid.: 27, 32, 35). A national survey of ‘Labour and the Poor’ revealed a concert-room industry in Liverpool in 1849:

The attention of the stranger who walks through the streets of Liverpool can scarcely fail to be directed to the great number of placards which invite the public to cheap or free concert-rooms. Of all shapes, sizes and colours to attract the eye, they cover the walls of the town, and compete with one another in the inducements which they offer to the public to favour with its patronage the houses which they advertise. (Russell, 1987: 74)

In addition to these concerts, a network of welfare and support agencies was established in Liverpool that was unmatched by any other British city, and the city consequently achieved a pre-eminence in philanthropy (Belchem, 2000: 100). Thus in 1923 the Liverpool Council of Voluntary Aid stated, ‘Liverpool is probably one of the most advanced towns in the whole country with regard to the supply of public and voluntary institutions for the social and metal welfare of its citizens.’¹¹

Migration, Ethnic Diversity and Multiculturalism

It is clear from the discussion so far that Liverpool’s role as a port had a huge impact on the social, cultural and musical life of the city. It influenced musical style and content a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• General Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Music and the City: Cultural Diversity in a Global Cosmopolis
• 2 Music as a City Sound: Rock Culture and the Poetics of Loss
• 3 Music as City Heritage: Decline and Renewal in the Nashville of the North
• 4 Music as a City Business: Trial, Tribulation and Place in a Labour of Love
• 5 Music as a City Industry: Haemorrhage, Debt and the Politics of Music Policy-Making
• 6 Music and City Tourism: Respect, Betrayal and the Haunting of the Beatles
• 7 Music as a City Quarter: Brands, Noises and Regeneration
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Methodology and Approach
• Bibliography
• Index