Programmes

The generally held view nowadays seems to be that pop music began with The Beatles. The idea behind The Real Music Show is to try to show that The Beatles and the other bands of their generation were in fact the culmination of a series of musical fusions that had been going on for decades beforehand.

With a starting point of 1941/42 (when the first black music sales chart was published and Johnnie Lee Wills released “Milk Cow Blues”), the programme hopes to give some idea of the intertwining strands of R&B, country, gospel, doo wop, jazz and other styles that helped create both rock ’n’ roll and soul music.

In addition, it hopes to give a flavour of the mainstream popular music of the time. The end point of the show’s focus is 1964, the year The Beatles conquered America, though it will stray a few years either side if it feels like it (what are rules for, if not to be broken?).

Regular features on The Real Music Show include profiles of musicians and other leading figures in the business, snapshots of the music of a particular year, new entries in the American Top 20 of fifty years ago (month by month), a complete history of the R&B no. 1 hits, music based on a given theme and much more besides.

Above all, the aim is to give an airing to the sort of enduring music that rarely if ever gets heard nowadays, to bring back memories for those who were around at the time and to introduce some great music to generations that, like The Poni-Tails, were “Born Too Late”.

Henry Ayrton (who lived through the rock ’n’ roll years himself, albeit in short pants for part of the time) has been broadcasting a weekly specialist music show of one sort or another on Radio Humberside since 1987. These include such dimly remembered offerings as “Great Northern Folk”, “Northern Blues”, “Swing Into Romance” and, most recently, “Henry’s Swing Club”.

Saturdays 7-9pm; repeated Sundays 11pm-1am