While Brian Smith’s book Boom Boom Boom Boom : American Rhythm & Blues In England 1962 – 1966 does major on the black Blues musicians who came before Brian’s lens, he was also interested in the British bands who were influenced by them. Fewer wore those influences more heavily than The Rolling Stones, who Brian saw a few times. A number of photographs appear in the book, but this particular shot is a nice way to remember drummer Charlie Watts and mark his huge contribution to British popular music. Duane Eddy was appearing in Manchester and The Stones were playing a small club in Cheshire. Keen to meet Duane they drove over to see his set before rushing back to the club. Someone asked Brian if he would take them a souvenir “selfie” and he managed to grab this rare shot backstage. A restored version will feature in the book.

We are starting to send people the first of the Brian Smith Blues Photo Book “Boom Boom Boom Boom” newsletters. To make sure you get these you will need to subscribe to them using the link on the book’s home page. It means subscribers get advance news and details without bothering people interested in other titles. Information will be posted here later, so if you follow this site anyway (enter your email address on the menu on the right where shown) you will also stay in the loop. I think that all makes sense!

We’re currently setting up with our new distributor and also testing a dedicated Easy Books on line shop, so titles may be a bit harder to source than normal for a short while. Once this is done we will be cracking on with our next batch of titles. In readiness we are also launching a couple of nice promo films shortly (that’s a still above) and details of these will appear here very soon. We are aware that certain online giants are listing our titles as ‘cancelled’ but this is not the case, simply they cannot be bothered to ask! Unlike someone at Waterstones in Germany who kindly rang direct for the story so they could keep their customers informed. Always buy from a proper book seller.

As we all face issues about where we can and cannot walk outdoors, here’s a reminder of what were in many ways less stressful times with a couple more page previews from the upcoming book of street photographs, Go Home On A Postcard. This book explores the art of cameramen who photographed holidaymakers and other people in the street hoping to sell them a print.

The trade began back in the 1920s but continued into the 1970s and the page above shows some unusual colour examples with great Seventies fashions on the teenagers. On the right are a couple taking a break in Hunstanton. Click on an image for a larger version.

The jazzy blazers on the two ladies above mark them out to be street photographers, working in Skegness in the 1950s. Women until then had worked mainly in the kiosks and backroom operations but increasingly began taking cameras on to the street and in some towns replaced their male counterparts. On the right is an older walking picture, a groups of friends chat and stroll down a prom seemingly unaware they were being photographed.

There is more information about the forthcoming title on the site.

Blues fan Norman Darwen, who writes for several blues mags, does a regular ‘Blues in UK’ page for some overseas mags. The Norwegian title Blues Newshave just run an interview with Brian Smith about his time as a photographer and fan, in Issue 117 [December 2020].

They included a selection of Brian’s later colour material, showing how much has appeared on other magazines in recent years. You can read about Brian’s Book Boom Boom Boom Boom on the site. This will now be our next title to be published.

Here’s another double page spread from Issue 47 of Vintage Rock magazine, with more of Brian Smith’s Little Richard photographs. You can read about the magazine below. While our book concentrates on Brian’s Sixties images, he did return to concert photography in the late 1970s and captured some of the big names on their later tours here. The two colour shots here are his.

We’ve been doing some tidying up on the site lately and realised that we had never added any page previews of the fab Covered! book on here. So this has now been rectified! It’s a book which has gone down well with designers and music fans in general, and worth checking out if you missed it before. Time to get the promo film done as well next!

Work on our next DEEP PURPLE title, Fire In The Sky, has continued during the lockdown period. As a result we decided to increase the page count significantly over that period. So much so that we will have to revise the price prior to actual publication! However the new material does add a lot to the story and it seemed a shame not to take this opportunity to include it. In addition there will be a good number of extra images and photographs which help explain crucial aspects of the story, including some we hope have not been seen before. We will update final publication details as soon as we can. In terms of production, the book artwork and layout is now complete apart from the extra photo pages. We have also run the finished layout past our proof-readers for another check, you can never be too careful! In the meantime here a couple more new page spreads and you can see more on the site. The spread below shows a collection of contemporary reviews (some of them very rare) which have been reproduced in full to give a real feel for exactly how the album was received by the press at the time.

Deep Purple In Rock was released 50 years ago today. It makes me feel nostalgic amongst other things; the trip up to the record shop at school lunch-time to buy the first single off it… then the b-side which trailed the album and made me decide it must go straight onto my wish list, and the saving up to buy it a few weeks later. Getting a sheet of Letraset and putting my initials on the labels in case my brother tried to annex it. So to publish the definitive biography about the album was a real treat. You can read about it on the site, the second edition is still available.