The Liverpool sounds project

Oral history research at the IPM

Authors

  • Dave Laing Independent Scholar; University of Liverpool Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v3i1.39

Keywords:

country music in Britain, dance bands, dance halls, diasporic Irish music, oral history

Abstract

Between 1991 and 1994, researchers at the Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool carried out a research project on popular music in twentieth-century Liverpool. This article describes the principal methodologies employed, notably oral history interviews, and introduces excerpts from the published results of the research. These describe and analyse dance bands and dance halls in Liverpool, the country music scene and local Irish traditional music making.

Author Biography

  • Dave Laing, Independent Scholar; University of Liverpool

    Dave Laing is a writer, researcher and editor. His books include The Sound of Our Time (1970) and One Chord Wonders (1985). He is working on a study of Elton John for the series Icons of Pop Music, of which he is co-editor. He is currently Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool.

References

Cohen, S. 1994. ‘Foreword’ to K. McManus, Céilís, Jigs and Ballads: Irish Music in Liverpool. Liverpool: Institute of Popular Music.

—1998. ‘Sounding Out the City: Music and the Sensuous Production of Place’. In The Place of Music, eds A. Leyshon et al., 269–90. New York: Guilford Press.

—2007. Decline, Renewal and the City in Popular Music Culture: Beyond the Beatles. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Finnegan, R. 1989. The Hidden Musicians: Making Music in an English Town. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gilmore, A. 1998. ‘ “Just in it for the craic?”: Irish Theme Pubs and Local Music Production’. In Popular Music: Intercultural Interpretations, ed. T. Mitsui, 200–19. kanazawa: Kanazawa University Graduate Program in Music.

Jenkins, T. 1994. ‘Let’s Go Dancing’: Dance Band Memories of 1930s Liverpool. Liverpool: Institute of Popular Music.

Leigh, S. 1981. ‘Merseybeat and Country’. Country Music Round Up (May): 16.

Leonard, M. 2005. ‘Performing Identities: Music and Dance in the Irish Communities of Coventry and Liverpool’. Social & Cultural Geography 6.4 (August): 515–29.

McManus, K. 1994a. Nashville of the North: Country Music in Liverpool. Liverpool: Institute of Popular Music.

—1994b. Céilís, Jigs and Ballads: Irish Music in Liverpool. Liverpool: Institute of Popular Music.

Nott, J. J. 2002. Music for the People: Popular Music and Dance in Interwar Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This England. 1999. Book of British Dance Bands. Cheltenham: This England Books.

Published

2008-11-23

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Laing, D. (2008). The Liverpool sounds project: Oral history research at the IPM. Popular Music History, 3(1), 39-64. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v3i1.39