The Train Kept A Rollin Tiny Bradshaw

The Yardbirds

There are many reasons for loving The Yardbirds that go way beyond knowing that the group was the launchpad for three superstar guitarists – Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. The Yardbirds operated as an interdependent unit, from their ‘most blueswailing’ origins in which they followed The Rolling Stones with a Crawdaddy Club residency, through their series of innovative hit singles – ‘For Your Love’, ‘Evil Hearted You’, ‘I’m A Man’ into ‘Shapes Of Things’ and beyond, which rivalled The Beatles, The Kinks and The Who at the very bleeding-edge of 1960s rock culture. The neglected psychedelic classics ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ and ‘Mister, You’re A Better Man Than I’ carried their legacy over into the punk era. Their cult albums, Five Live Yardbirds, Roger The Engineer and Little Games, remain highly esteemed and collectable decades later, while their sequence in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up movie catches the sixties at its most swingingly iconic. Classic rock seldom came as classic as it does with The Yardbirds, now considered stars of heritage rock. This book exhaustively traces the full Yardbirds story track-by-track from first to last, then picks up the narrative as former members become Led Zeppelin, Renaissance, Box of Frogs to the later Yardbirds reunion after the death of frontman Keith Relf. While interviewing Fairground Attraction for their recent second album, Andrew Darlington found himself discussing favourite biscuits and the correct art of dunking with singer Eddi Reader. As part of UV Pop, Andrew’s own lyrics can be found on the CD See You Later, Cowboy. His popular Eternal Assassin Sci-Fi-Fantasy stories are available from Tule Fog Press, taking the chronology from prehistory all the way into the far future. This book follows his other works on The Hollies, The Human League and The Small Faces. He lives in Ossett, West Yorkshire.

Tiny Bradshaw and His Orchestra

Before Elvis

An essential work for rock fans and scholars, Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock ‘n’ Roll surveys the origins of rock ’n’ roll from the minstrel era to the emergence of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley. Unlike other histories of rock, Before Elvis offers a far broader and deeper analysis of the influences on rock music. Dispelling common misconceptions, it examines rock’s origins in hokum songs and big-band boogies as well as Delta blues, detailing the embrace by white artists of African-American styles long before rock ’n’ roll appeared. This unique study ranges far and wide, highlighting not only the contributions of obscure but key precursors like Hardrock Gunter and Sam Theard but also the influence of celebrity performers like Gene Autry and Ella Fitzgerald. Too often, rock historians treat the genesis of rock ’n’ roll as a bolt from the blue, an overnight revolution provoked by the bland pop music that immediately preceded it and created through the white appropriation of music till then played only by and for black audiences. In Before Elvis, Birnbaum daringly argues a more complicated history of rock’s evolution from a heady mix of ragtime, boogie-woogie, swing, country music, mainstream pop, and rhythm-and-blues—a melange that influenced one another along the way, from the absorption of blues and boogies into jazz and pop to the integration of country and Caribbean music into rhythm-and-blues. Written in an easy style, Before Elvis presents a bold argument about rock’s origins and required reading for fans and scholars of rock ’n’ roll history.