Books by Michael Brocken

In charting the life and times of Gordon Stretton, this text makes a major contribution to both jazz and popular music studies. By asking historians to re-evaluate the contributions made to the development of jazz by those "other than" African Americans, it proposes new jazz histories emanating from pathways, influences and encounters.

At times it appears that a whole industry exists to perpetuate the myth of origin of the Beatles. This book tells the history of the disparate and now partially hidden musical strands that contributed to Liverpool's musical countenance. It is also a critique of Beatles-related institutionalized popular music mythology.