Robert Bruce Lindsay

This unreleased session from trumpeter Harry Beckett, was originally recorded in 1974 for BBC Radio 2. Remastered from the original tapes, it presents a brilliant snapshot of music from the era, as he mixes turbo-charged jazz with his Caribbean heritage and the rock and funk of the 70s.

As urban America of the nineteenth century grew and prospered, it became anxious to show itself civilized and "cultured" along the lines of established European culture. And so it was that the music of America's founders – the untutored but vigorous religious music of Colonial America, and the rugged, folk-derived spiritual song of the countryside – was more or less banished from polite society. The middle classes preferred (or were told to prefer) major-key hymns in "correct" four-part harmony. Funny stereopticon slides were published showing country yokels at an old-fashioned "singing school," presumably caterwauling some anthem by a disgraced eighteenth century like Billings or Read. Standard American music history texts, some even in use today, wrote off these repertoires, dismissing them in a few lines, or even ignoring them entirely.

As urban America of the nineteenth century grew and prospered, it became anxious to show itself civilized and "cultured" along the lines of established European culture. And so it was that the music of America's founders – the untutored but vigorous religious music of Colonial America, and the rugged, folk-derived spiritual song of the countryside – was more or less banished from polite society. The middle classes preferred (or were told to prefer) major-key hymns in "correct" four-part harmony. Funny stereopticon slides were published showing country yokels at an old-fashioned "singing school," presumably caterwauling some anthem by a disgraced eighteenth century like Billings or Read. Standard American music history texts, some even in use today, wrote off these repertoires, dismissing them in a few lines, or even ignoring them entirely.