Charlie Phillips moved to London from Jamaica in 1956 and began to document life in his Notting Hill community, taking photographs with a Kodak Brownie camera he had been given by a black American serviceman. His photographs have become a visual record of London in the 1960s, especially of the growing black population and its impact on local culture.

London’s music scene increasingly featured the American and Caribbean sounds of soul, funk, reggae and ska during the 1960s. A popular venue for all of these music types was the Cue Club in Paddington, one of the first black owned clubs, established in 1962 by Jamaican-born Wilbert Campbell. Better known as ‘Count Suckle’, Campbell had made his name working as a sound system operator, which involved leading a crew of DJs and MCs playing the latest records on a large custom built speaker system. The Cue Club allowed him to bring well known American soul and R&B acts to London, like the Tennessee singer Mabel Smith (1924-1972), better known as Big Maybelle.

The V&A acquired ten photographs by Charlie Phillips as part of the Staying Power project. This selection includes a photograph of Count Suckle’s sound system rival, Duke Vin. Photographs by Dennis Morris of sound systems and basement clubs in the 1970s were also acquired. Staying Power is a five year partnership between the V&A and Black Cultural Archives. The project aims to explore black British experience from the 1950s to the 1990s through photographs acquired by the V&A and oral histories conducted by Black Cultural Archives.