Shakin' Stevens
Welsh rock and roll singer and songwriter
Michael Barratt (born 4 March 1948), known professionally as Shakin' Stevens, is a Welsh singer and songwriter. He was the UK's biggest-selling singles artist of the 1980s.
His recording and performing career began in the late 1960s, although it was not until 1980 that his commercial success began. His most successful songs were nostalgia hits, evoking the sound of 1950s rock and roll and pop.
In the UK alone, Stevens has charted 28 Top-40 hit singles including four chart-topping hits "This Ole House", "Green Door", "Oh Julie", and "Merry Christmas Everyone". Aside from "Merry Christmas Everyone" remaining popular during the Christmas season, his last Top 40 single was "Trouble" in 2005.
Early life
Michael Barratt, who would later adopt the stage name Shakin' Stevens, was the youngest of 13 children born in Cardiff to Jack and May Barratt. His father was a First World War veteran who by 1948 was working in the building trade, having previously worked as a coal miner. The oldest of his siblings was born in the mid-1920s, and by the time of his birth some of his siblings had already left the family home to marry and start families of their own. Jack Barratt died in 1972 at the age of 75.
“Shakin' Stevens” enters the record as welsh rock and roll singer and songwriter. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Shakin', Stevens and Welsh can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Shakin' Stevens” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Shakin', Stevens and Welsh provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q978793. VIAF identifies the subject as 84982214. The Library of Congress control number is n93107991. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1980, 2005 and 1972.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Shakin' Stevens”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Shakin' Stevens primary sources, Shakin' Stevens archive and Shakin' research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Shakin' Stevens”?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Shakin' Stevens” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.