Wizz Jones sings a topical song about the Beatniks in Cornwall 1960 and Alan Whicker reports on the local council’s letter to shopkeepers urging them all to refuse to serve people with long hair.
Wizz Jones with the beatniks in Newquay 1960
Wizz Jones was one of the seminal acoustic singer songwriters who helped to create the british folk guitar style, and he still plays monthly at a small club in Tooting.
The beatnik era was before my time, in that I was a child in Cornwall at the time and can remember these stories on the local TV news programmes as well as seeing the “No Beatniks” signs in all the cafes in St Ives, another Cornish resort which took a hard line against the beats, eventually deploying police and dogs to chase them out of the town.
Andy Roberts is a writer who initiated DARnet. Contact me on aroberts@gmail.com or @aroberts on twitter
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