Among the many things that John Lennon said, one of the more stupid was that ‘there was nothing before Elvis’. Well, Studs Terkel’s new book is made up of interviews with singers and musicians, mostly from the first half of the last century, who worked in this antediluvian world, striving to fill the gap before the coming of the Memphis One.

It’s rather a shame that the musicians are placed together in categories; opera and lieder singers together, folk, jazz, and blues artists all in their separate compartments. It would perhaps have been better to present the subjects in chronological order, so that we had, say, blues guitarist and singer Big