Sixties City presents a wide-ranging series of articles on all aspects of the Sixties, penned by the creator of the iconic 60s music paper  Mersey Beat

click on a letter to see the names of the artists and links to relevant information pages

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"When Cavern disc jockey Bob Wooler and I put our heads together in 1961 to make a list of Merseyside groups, we came up with a figure of approximately 250. Time was to prove we had drastically under-rated the growth of musical groups in the area, no doubt due to the vast amount of venues where aspiring musicians could practice their trade.  The groups are from the entire Merseyside area, which includes Liverpool, Birkenhead, New Brighton, the Wirral generally, Chester, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Crosby, Formy and Southport. These are all genuine Mersey groups, although some groups in other parts of the country arose with the same name as some of them, such as: The Jets, The Dakotas and The Rebel Rousers."

"The most popular line-up was a quartet with three guitarists – lead, rhythm and bass – plus a drummer. The three guitarists up front would engage in vocal harmony. The Beatles were particularly adept at this as Paul McCartney, being left-handed, could use the same microphone as John Lennon, when they sang together – also producing a visual effect that many of the other groups couldn’t imitate. This basic line-up was the one generally referred to when people later talked of the ‘Liverpool Sound’ or the ‘Mersey Sound’, and it was most apparent with groups such as The Beatles, The Searchers, Faron’s Flamingos and The Swinging Bluejeans. However, this image tends to make people forget just how extensive the range of the music scene in Liverpool was: there were duos, trios, quintets, and groups with pianos and saxophones in their line-ups."   
Bill Harry

The Modern Blues Quartet    This band came out of a band called The Vogue (pictured).    Thanks to band member Graham 'Chalky' White for the image and the information.

Bill Harry attended the Liverpool College of Art with Stuart Sutcliffe and John Lennon and made the arrangements for Brian Epstein to visit The Cavern, where he saw The Beatles for the first time. Bill was a member of 'The Dissenters' and the founder and editor of 'Mersey Beat', the iconic weekly music newspaper that documented the early Sixties music scene in the Liverpool area and is possibly best known for being the first periodical to feature a local band called 'The Beatles'. He has worked as a high powered publicist, doing PR for acts such as Suzi Quatro, Free, The Arrows and Hot Chocolate and has managed press campaigns for record labels such as CBS, EMI, Polydor. Bill is the critically acclaimed author of a large number of books about The Beatles and the 60s era including 'The Beatles Who's Who', 'The Best Years of the Beatles' and the Fab Four's 'Encyclopedia' series. He has appeared on 'Good Morning America' and has received a Gold Award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.

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