No episode overview available.

It is generally assumed that American popular music comes from the coastal regions of Africa; that the slaves brought...

Thanks to the hit movie, “The Sting”, everyone reckons they know about Ragtime. But do they? This Episode includes t...

This episode takes a look at the origins of jazz and challenges the theories that it is a black music form which was ...

Exploring the origins of the blues, with contributions and performance recordings by Memphis Slim, Ray Charles, Muddy...

The history of suggestive songs and their vaudeville and music hall beginnings, with artists featured including Judy ...

The story of Tin Pan Alley, where hit records were made to order and the first sightings of the popular music industr...

The story of the musical, an art form that emerged from vaudeville, operetta, burlesque and the British music hall. F...

This episode tells the story of swing. Featuring archive footage and contributions from Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, B...

In the late forties, white record companies labelled commercial black music “race music”. Eventually, Jerry Wexler, ...

Country music was, originally, home-made music. It described the births, marriages and deaths that happened in every...

After Nashville had raped American country music, it might seem that the folk traditions this music embodied had been...

The story of rock n roll begins and ends in Memphis, Tennessee, in the tiny studio of record producer Sam Phillips. ...

“They were very scruffy” recounts Allan Williams, the Beatles’ first manager, as he describes the Beatles’ early esca...

The sixties began, according to Eric Burdon as “a party”. “The aim of all of us, Hendrix, The Who, The Stones” Burd...

This Episode takes place almost entirely on stage; fans are always seen from the performer’s point of view. Thus, we...

The film opens at a pop festival. Drug-smoking is very much in evidence. “These fellows will answer to God” says th...