Pulp frontman turned literary gatekeeper Jarvis Cocker has announced his first acquistion in his role as “editor-at-large” at Faber & Faber. 

Cocker’s relationship with Faber began back in 2011, when the imprint published his Mother, Brother, Lover: Selected Lyrics collection. Early last year, he was named “editor-at-large” at the publishers, with a “broad commissioning role” to bring more music-orientated books to the imprint. As The Quietus report, Cocker has made his first signing: J.P. Bean’s Singing From The Floor.

Singing From The Floor offers an in-depth history of British folk clubs, with a particular focus on the “acoustic revolution” of the 1950s and 1960s. According to Faber, the book documents “the folk revival, where a generation of musicians, among much drink and raucous cheer and influenced by the skiffle craze, rediscovered Britain’s own folk music tradition alongside the folk and blues coming over from America.” The book includes interviews with major names from the period, including Peggy Seeger, Martin Carthy and Shirley Collins.

Cocker discovered the book through a familiar friend – heartsore crooner and sometime Pulp member Richard Hawley. Over to Jarvis: “When my friend Richard Hawley said he’d met “a man in a pub who had a book for me” I have to admit I was slightly dubious. But he was right. Singing From The Floor portrays an important movement in vernacular culture in the voices of the people who made it happen – and that’s not an easy task. Especially when the events in question took place many years ago and may have involved the consumption of alcohol. JP Bean has captured this moment before it is lost forever, and has made it live again on the page. He’s a very clever chap. Let’s raise a glass to him”.

Singing From The Floor is due in April 2014 as part of the Faber Social series. Faber have also just published Richard King’s enormous How Soon Is Now, a primer to the “the madmen and mavericks who made independent music” from 1975-2005.