STVDIO

Nearly 150 writers, performers and producers appear in the Walk On By series, from Bing Crosby to Kylie Minogue. A compelling history of the music that has been the soundtrack of the past 100 years, it includes performances by Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong sing, the best of Motown and some of the finest pop produced in the past 40 years.

Elvis Costello, Noel Gallagher, Ray Charles, Brian Wilson and Keith Richards discuss their feelings about popular music, while Stephen Sondheim, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Kylie Minogue, The Bee Gees, ABBA and Tim Rice discuss the pressures of a more contemporary industry.

Starting with black-and Jewish-influenced traditional music, the series tracks the growth of musical theatre on Broadway and Hollywood; the emergence of singers like Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra who toured with the dance bands of the Thirties and Forties; and the blues and country roots that produced Elvis-style rock ‘n’ roll.

Walk On By investigates the rise of the record producer as the modern pop industry was born in the Fifties, tries to explain why the Sixties were a golden age of popular music and why the Seventies belonged to California’s singer songwriters.

Finally the series turns its attention to the phenomena of the movie soundtrack hit and the manufactured pop bands of the Eighties and Nineties.