OK, now I’m making up a playlist of songs in ‘the vernacular’ from the period normally covered here (1950s/60s and maybe very early 1970s). To start with, I’ve avoided early exponents like Max Miller, George Formby or Gracie Fields and serious specialists (eg Shirley & Dolly Collins, Martin Carthy). I’ve just trawled through acts in the Guinness Book of hit records – and I’ve avoided comedians like Bernards Bresslaw & Cribbins and he whose name must never be spoken again. Give me some more (no Mr Mook, not Jimmy Shand and his Band):
Lonnie Donegan “My Old Man’s a Dustman”, Anthony Newley “Do You Mind?”, Max Bygraves “Fings Ain’t What they Used to Be”, Tommy Steele “What a Mouth”, Mike Sarne “Come Outside”, Joe Brown “Picture of You”, Marianne Faithful “As Tears Go By”, the Kinks “Waterloo Sunset”, the Small Faces “Lazy Sunday”, the Beatles “Penny Lane”, the Who “Pictures of Lily”, Pink Floyd “Bike”, the Move “Blackberry Way”, the New Vaudeville Band “Winchester Cathedral”, Pentangle “Lord Franklin”, Scaffold “Lily the Pink”, Fairport Convention “A Sailor’s LIfe” (etc)
It seems to me that maybe what happened through the 60s was a gradual rehabilitation of singing in a British accent while moving away from the comic stereotypes of the earlier decades. It became more prevalent in later decades.
