With millionaires Eric Clapton, Bryan Ferry and Mike Rutherford performing at Highclere Castle, near Newbury, in aid of the Countryside Alliance, and Ferry's son prepared to break the law to defend fox hunting, old-fashioned rock 'n' roll fans have started wondering what happened to the music of the oppressed under-classes.

Then there was the news that Witney MP and Conservative leader David Cameron is a fan of the patron saint of left-wing protest music, Bob Dylan, pictured right receiving an honorary doctorate of music at St Andrew's.

It is reassuring, therefore, to read Studs Terkel's And They All Sang: Great Musicians of the 20th century Talk About Their Music (Granta, £15.99).

Terkel is the voice of America's dispossessed, a sympathetic interviewer of blue-collar workers and blacks, who has produced a stream of oral history books covering the period of worst hardship in the world's richest country.

And They All Sang contains more than 40 of his interviews for Chicago classical radio station WFMT. Terkel coaxes a young Dylan to reveal how he came to write A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, Louis Armstrong and Dizzie Gillespie talk about their influences. David Cameron really should read this.