1951 in British music

"See also 1951 in the United Kingdom, 1950 in British music, 1952 in British music"

The musical scene in Britain in 1951 would at first seem a very fragmented place ranging from Benjamin Britten to Max Bygraves. For all its diversity it had several linking threads, drawing inspiration from across the Atlantic both from the U.S. and the growing musical influence of the British Caribbean.

Opening of Royal Festival Hall

The cultural year was dominated by the Festival of Britain and the opening of The Royal Festival Hall on the South bank of the Thames which would become of the country's great musical venues in the coming years.

Folk music

The Festival was a celebration of music, art and theatre but primarily it provided an opportunity for the staging of many events from the first Folk music Festival held in Edinburgh organised with the help of such talents as the American Alan Lomax, the Irish traditional musician Seamus Ennis and the political theatre director Ewan MacColl, who would go on to form the Ballad and Blues Club.

Trad jazz

A style of jazz known as Trad or Traditional Jazz was emerging drawing for its inspiration the old New Orleans or Dixieland Jazz of an earlier period. The luminaries of this music were people like Ken Colyer who had formed the Crane River Jazz Band which included Chris Barber and later a banjo player called Lonnie Donegan who would introduce a musical style from America called skiffle which would influence the musical career of a young John Lennon. However, the seeds of rock and roll could not even be glimpsed in the UK of 1951.

Trad jazz was a reaction to the big band jazz of the previous decade with its 20 or sometimes even 40 member orchestras named after the band leaders such as Joe Loss and Kenny Baker. The latter were still popular in 1951 and played a form of jazz called Swing. Paramount among the band leaders of this time was Ted Heath whose Orchestra regularly featured on B.B.C. radio programmes. They were an essential part of the nightclub scene in the big cities of the time and were heavily influenced by their American counterparts such as Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. The smaller Trad Jazz groups in contrast including such then unknowns as George Melly and Acker Bilk who jokingly would dress up in 1920s style with straw hats bowlers and striped blazers and play the "plinky plonk Saints go marching in" style of original jazz.

Classical music

The opening of a new British opera was still a popular event and in 1951 Benjamin Britten's opera "Billy Budd" premièred at the end of the year to great acclaim.

While it mainly attracted a middle class audience, opera in general and other forms of classical music were popular in concert and on the radio. It was a sophisticated music and with the operas sung in English it struck a note of patriotism in a nation still recovering from the Second World War and just signed up to the Global War on Communism in Korea and South East Asia.

Recording

Sheet music could still be purchased in 1951 but the proliferation of radio and the gramophone records meant that the music most heard was probably the songs from popular American shows such as "Oklahoma" and "The King And I".

The biggest selling artists on both sides of the Atlantic were Bing Crosby and Doris Day but English singers such as Gracie Fields and Vera Lynn were very popular receiving radio play and performing in many live venues.

Recordings of classical music and opera were also very popular with gramophoneowners.

Births

*February 27 - Steve Harley, musician (Cockney Rebel)
*March 1 - Mike Read, DJ
*March 4 - Chris Rea, singer-songwriter
*April 14 - Julian Lloyd Webber, cellist
*June 8 - Bonnie Tyler, singer
*August 19 - John Deacon, bassist (Queen)
*October 2 - Sting, singer and musician

Deaths

*March 6 - Ivor Novello, composer and entertainer (b. 1893)
*August 21 - Constant Lambert, composer (b. 1905)

References

*Mervyn Cooke & Philip Reed - "Benjamin Britten"
*Peggy Seeger - "Ewan MacColl: his life and works"

External links

* [http://www.kencolyertrust.org Ken Colyer Trust jazz website]
* [http://www.sadlerswells.com Sadler's Wells]