Music of the United Kingdom (1950s)
| 1950s in music in the UK | |
| Number-one singles | |
| Number-one albums | |
| Best-selling singles | |
| Best-selling albums | |
| Summaries and charts 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959 |
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| ←1949 | 1960→ |
| Top 10/12 singles | |
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1952, 1953, 1954 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959 |
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| 1960→ | |
Music of the United Kingdom began to develop in the 1950s; from largely insular and derivative forms to become one of the leading centres of popular music in the modern world. By 1950 indigenous forms of British popular music, including folk music, brass and silver bands, music hall and dance bands, were already giving way to the influence of American forms of music including jazz, swing and traditional pop, mediated through film and records.
The significant change of the mid-1950s was the impact of American rock and roll, which provided a new model for performance and recording, based on a youth market. Initially this was dominated by American acts, or re-creations of American forms of music, but soon distinctly British forms began to appear, first in the uniquely British take on American folk music in the skiffle craze of the 1950s with artists such as Lonnie Donegan, then in the beginnings of a folk revival that came to place an emphasis on national traditions and then in early attempts to produce British rock and roll such as Cliff Richard & the Shadows' Move It, often cited at the first British rock and roll record.
Jazz reached Britain from America through recordings and performers who visited the country while it was a relatively new genre, soon after the end of the First World War. Jazz began to be played by British musicians from the 1930s and on a widespread basis in the 1940s, often within dance bands. From the late 1950s British "modern jazz", highly influenced by American bebop, began to emerge, led by figures such as John Dankworth and Ronnie Scott, while Ken Colyer, George Webb and Humphrey Lyttelton emphasised New Orleans, trad jazz. Scott's Soho club became a focal point of British jazz, seeing the best of British and international acts. From the 1960s British Jazz began to develop more individual characteristics, absorbing a variety of influences, including free jazz, British blues, as well as European and world music.
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