One of the projects we have just finished working on for the next issue of Uncut, on sale next week, was a special promotional feature we have produced in association with hmv, which is newly returned to robust high street health after recent rough times. In other words, hmv’s music and film catalogues music are back to full strength, its stock of classic albums and movies rebuilt. What better moment, then, for hmv in collaboration with Uncut to celebrate ‘six decades of unforgettable entertainment’, with great prices on many albums and films that have defined the times and continue to inspire and excite. In our next issue, we look at 60 of the albums and films that have shaped popular culture and with it our lives, since the 1950s, that decade of dramatic change and upheaval that saw the birth of rock’n’roll, a cool new modernism introduced to jazz and the first fault lines appear in the Hollywood studio system. To preface the appearance of the feature in our next issue, and coincide with the launch this week of hmv’s special offers on thousands of albums and films, I’ve made up my own 50s’ playlist, as follows, just to get, you know, in the mood. Music Frank Sinatra In The Wee Small Hours (1955) Elvis Presley Elvis Presley (1956) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uke1B0FpIZ8 Little Richard Here’s Little Richard (1957) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7pjP_XkK4U Buddy Holly Buddy Holly (1958) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0VPxYAM698 Billie Holiday Lady In Satin (1958) Bo Diddley Bo Diddley (1958) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeZHB3ozglQ Jerry Lee Lewis Jerry Lee Lewis 1958 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yRdDnrB5kM Miles Davis Kinda Blue (1959) Howlin’ Wolf Moanin’ In the Moonlight (1959) Chuck Berry Chuck Berry Is On Top (1959) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLMK9-Ns-TY Films Sunset Boulevard Billy Wilder 1950 On The Waterfront Elia Kazan 1954 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QsNXd57Ppw Night Of The Hunter Charles Laughton 1955 Rebel Without A Cause Nicholas Ray 1955 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpm4NGSWH2I The Searchers John Ford 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers Don Siegel 1956 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuL2QwsNeM8 12 Angry Men Sidney Lumet 1957 Touch Of Evil Orson Welles 1958 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg8MqjoFvy4 Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock 1958 Have a good week.