‘Shellac and Swing!’ tells the story of the gramophone’s
‘golden age,’ from 1900-1955, when it helped to shape
Britain’s culture from the arts to warfare. The story focuses on
the gramophone, the invention of Emile Berliner in the 1880s, but
begins with a brief outline of the first attempts to record the
human voice and of Edison’s invention of the cylinder and the
phonograph. It uses primary evidence, images and interviews with
DJs, fans, musicians and historians to explore this fascinating and
often eccentric tale. Each chapter ends with ‘On the Record,’ a
discussion of a record that relates to the chapter’s themes.
Although the gramophone and its fragile shellac discs were vital to
Britain’s music scene—opera and music hall, the Jazz Age, the
crooners, early rock’n’roll—its impact was far more
extensive. Its place in British history encompasses advertising and
design, fraud and piracy, phallic symbols, talking books, the
threat from radio and TV, the contrasting worlds of the Salvation
Army and adult ‘party’ discs, the creation of a parliamentary
insult, new political strategies and the seditious activity of the
Mau Mau. From the establishment of the Gramophone Company in London
in the late 1890s to the end of shellac record production in the
1950s, the British public bought the machines and the discs in
their millions and the record labels made stars of performers like
Caruso, Harry Lauder, Al Bowlly and Dame Nellie Melba. ‘Shellac
and Swing!’ explores the ways in which the gramophone helped
these singers to achieve stardom but it also explores in detail and
for the first time many other stories of not-so-famous performers,
of the gramophone in political electioneering and of forgotten
technology: the first pirate radio broadcasters, the soldiers who
took their ‘Trench Decca’ portables to the Western Front, the
invention of the Flame-O-Phone, the People’s Budget recordings
and the pioneering label owner and producer of ‘blue’ discs.
The gramophone’s heyday ended with the rise of rock ’n ’roll,
teenagers, the 45 rpm single, the LP and the record player, but it
survives today as part of a vibrant contemporary music, fashion and
lifestyle scene.
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