VA - British Hit Parade 1956-58 (2018)

The music business was transformed in the middle years of the 1950s by the arrival of rock ‘n’ roll as not only a powerful and increasingly evident element in the record sales charts, but a catalyst for huge social change as the teenage baby-boomers asserted themselves as an economic force. Acrobat has a long-established, popular and successful series called The British Hit Parade which, for the years 1956, 1957 and 1958 comprise two 4-CD sets for each year featuring every record which appeared in the UK Top 30 during those years – a total of around 600 records across the three years. This great-value 40-track 2-CD set comprises a distillation of some of the biggest hits across those three cataclysmic years as American rock ‘n’ roll legends made inroads into the established order of middle-of-the-road 50s pop, and then Britain started to develop teen stars of its own. Every single one of the records in this collection was either a No.1 or No. 2 in the charts, so these are hits that many people who were growing up through those years will remember as key landmarks in a teenage rite of passage, from skiffle to novelty hits, big ballads to out-and-out rock ‘n’ roll. It makes for evocative and hugely entertaining listening.