Playlist by the Pig’s Arms Musicologist – Algernon
Merseybeat had its beginnings at the Cavern Club. This list looks at the bands that played there often under the management or influence of Brian Epstein. It looks at the early years the early 60’s. These bands should be well known.
How do you do it – Gerry and the Pacemakers
Sweets for my sweet – The Searchers
Love of the loved – Cilla Black
Love me do – The Beatles
Some other guy – The Big Three
Hippy Hippy Shake – The swinging blue jeans
It’s love that really counts – The Merseybeats
The Fortune Teller – The Merseybeats .
These bands not as well known, some still playing today others disbanded a few years after. All had their start at the Cavern Club.
Angel of love -The Black knights
You don’t know what love is – The Dennsions
Hello little girl – The fourmost
Stupidity – Kingsize Taylor and the dominoes
Diddly daddy – The Liverbirds
Who told you – Freddy Star and the Midnighters
Just a little bit – The undertakers
Not really from Liverpool but not far away in Manchester, these bands also had their start at the Cavern Club.
I’m telling you now – Freddie and the Dreamers
I’m into something good – Hermans Hermits
Just one look – The Hollies
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Uncertain where the term Beat music came from. It was a live band alternative to the balladeers that dominated in the late 50’s. The term beat apparently was derived from the rhythms and string back beat the bands adopted from the R&B Rock and Roll and Soul influences in the tunes. Merseybeat refers to those bands around the Liverpool, and the River Mersey, it was also a magazine started by a friend of John Lennon who somewhat wrote favourable articles about The Beatles. Outside of Liverpool, R&B or moreso Blues dominated beat bands of the time.
Beat was falling out of favour by the mid sixties, with most bands either disbanding by around 1967 or moving onto other styles.
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This was meant to be in reply to Emms question.
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Many thanks, Dr Algy 😊
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I wonder if it came from beatnik?
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I think beatnik refers to the Beat Generation. Literary rather than Music
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All good stuff but have to confess I never liked Ferry Cross the Mersey (it had no beat).
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That’s why I didn’t include it with this list, I though it was more pop than Merseybeat. Personally I did like the tune and Don’t let the sun catch you crying which is similar.
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Bloody fantastic playlist today, Dr Algy – Pig’s Arms Glenn A Baker.
I get that the musos referred to their music as “beat” e.g. the Beatles, but I’ve ;omg associated the term with the San Franciso Beat Generation of writers and poets likeJack Kerouac, Neil Cassady and Allen Ginsberg. How did the brit beat come about ?
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