Abstract:

Kenny Lynch was the first successful black British pop singer. Lynch moved from singing jazz standards to popular music in 1960. By the mid-1960s, when his popularity as a singer declined, Lynch was on his way to becoming the most well-known black, British-born, all-round entertainer in Britain. He worked as a song-writer, an actor in films and as a stand-up comedian. As Lynch developed his successful career, Britain was in the grip of a race-based scare about West Indian, and South Asian, immigration. There has been little work published on post-Second World War British-born popular singers before the era of the post-1948 West Indian migration. This article explores the racial context of Lynch’s success and explores the positioning of Lynch as a British-born black man.

Author: Jon Stratton