h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Mersey Beat - From Newspaper to Sound - A87799081
Author: Bluebottle - U43530

A Flea Market Rescue:
Author: merseybeat1961 - U4367898
Entry: Mersey Beat - A12282905
Also: Mersey Sound - A20079137

It looks like the original author submitted the original to Peer Review, and later, rather than updating his original article based on the comments received, created a new one and promptly ed.

Still – the Mersey Beat story, from Newspaper origins to the term used to apply to a type of music in the early 1960s.

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A very enjoyable read - thanks for this.

The only place I lost the thread of it was the couple of paragraphs which mention Brian Epstein and the "My Bonnie" single. I couldn't tell if it was repetition or not. Maybe it's just a little confusing and needs to be simplified.

I'd also remove that irrelevant and gratuitous mention of Southampton. Completely irrelevant to this entry.

Icy

I've re-written the two paragraphs about Brian Epstein and 'My Bonnie', so hopefully it has eliminated similarities bordering on repetition..

I've deleted the Southampton mention from the footnote. The myth that exists was that Liverpool developed a strong music scene because of 'Cunard Yanks', sailors on Cunard's liners who brought American music back from New York. The point was how could they do this, when the principle port that Cunard used was Southampton and not Liverpool? If the Cunard Yanks were solely responsible, why didn't the 'Mersey Beat' sound develop in Southampton instead?

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Billy Fury A12921860

Was also influenced by the American Sailors music, so it didn't have to be Cunard related. Cunard ships were registered in Southampton, but that didn't mean the ships actually travelled there.

Liverpool also had the White Star Line (Titanic fame), Blue Star Line and Blue Funnel (Blue Flue) all working out of Liverpool.



lil x

Thanks for the link – I've added Billy Fury now.
Without entering a discussion comparing the advantages and disadvantages of Liverpool and Southampton as international ports, the underlying question is 'did the Merseybeat sound come from sailors bringing songs unavailable anywhere else from America to Liverpool?'
Bill Harry, author of Mersey Beat, and Alan Clayson in the book 'The Walrus Was Ringo: 101 "Beatles" Myths Debunked' both say no, and that all the songs performed by Merseybeat musicians at the time had already been released on record in Britain.
That isn't to say that sailors didn't tell their family and friends in Liverpool about artists that they'd heard in the States and encourage them to buy their songs released in the UK. The extent of the influence of being a port can never be measured. However Harry has said that after painstaking research, all the songs heard in Mersey clubs had previously been released on record throughout the UK, and therefore were not unique to Liverpool.

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When I was doing my research, it seemed that American music still influenced the region from the war years. Jive, Rock'n'Roll and Swing were already here, I think Blues came a little later.

New sounds heard from the ships influenced home grown singers and writers to make their own music. This would have just been at the time when post-war austerity was beginning to ease and people were able to enjoy the club scene and purchase '45' singles cheaply.

I enjoyed this too

The only thing I was confused by was the part of the sentence in the Mersey Beat section "photographs were paid for in exchange for advertisements in the paper"



I enjoyed a visit to the Music section of the Museum of Liverpool Life earlier this year and this Entry gave me a good flavour of that

I've re-worded that section to hopefully make it clearer that photographers were not initially paid a wage, but allowed to advertise their photography services in the paper free of charge.
I've also added a link to The Beatles Story and Museum of Liverpool.

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Your Guide Entry has just been picked from Peer Review by one of our Scouts, and is now heading off into the Editorial Process, which ends with publication in the Edited Guide. We've moved this Review Conversation out of Peer Review and to the entry itself.

If you'd like to know what happens now, check out the page on 'What Happens after your Entry has been Recommended?' at EditedGuide-Process. We hope this explains everything.

Thanks for contributing to the Edited Guide!

Well done merseybeat61!

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Well done for taking up the gauntlet,<BB<





lil x

This one was fun to write, and a good excuse to listen to the Beatles again.

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