Britain Learns to Rock!

The history of how the UK has taken in American sounds and styles reaches back well into the Victorian era and likely further back, so arguably when rock and roll first filtered over in the 1950s it was simply the latest turn in a long story, with the country’s jazz veterans probably thinking back to their own youth in the 1920s. As Bob Stanley argues in his enthusiastic but perfectly self-aware essay, though, for all that any number of the tracks featured on Britain Learns to Rock! exhibit a true second-hand naivete, it’s still showcasing the building blocks of the explosion of sounds yet to come across the decades. Organized chronologically and covering 1953 to 1958, it’s a steady progression of showcasing jazz and big band chancers, crooners trying to stay in touch, a truly homegrown skiffle scene interjecting its energy – the famed Lonnie Donegan turns up twice – and the stable of heartthrobs overseen by Larry Parnes and often recorded by Joe Meek. When the disc concludes with a solid one-two of Vince Taylor’s “Right Behind You Baby” and Cliff Richard’s “Move It,” the future is fully in the offing.