The Beatles and Black Music discusses the influence that black music and culture has had over the Beatles throughout their career. The book adopts a musicological and historiographic account to demonstrate the extent to which Liverpool’s colonial history has influenced the Beatles’ music. Beginning with the grand narrative British colonial history pre-Beatles, it moves through the influence on the Beatles teenage years in the 1950s, through their association with Lord Woodbine, the Beatles love American Rhythm and Blues in the mid-1960s, a discussion of post-colonial British identity to the lasting effect black music has for the Beatles’ legacy and still has on the solo careers of Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney. Tracing the history from the Slave Trade in 1795 to the nascent Mersey Beat scene in the early 1960s, this book is the first to explore the Beatles from this important cultural lens.
