Jim Carter - Lonnie Donegan and Me

"Lonnie Donegan’s stock has sunk pretty low, as illustrated by a sequence at the start of this tribute where Jim Carter stops people in the street and asks if they’ve heard of him. Cue blank looks; those that do remember associate him with My Old Man’s a Dustman.

But as Carter relates, in the late 1950s Donegan hit British pop music like a force of nature, singing wild skiffle music that lit the fuse for rock ‘n’ roll. “It was primal,” says Roger Daltrey. “Like a bolt of lightning,” says Van Morrison. That’s the caliber of Carter’s interviewees – mostly ageing legends, including two Beatles. “A lot of us got out the factory thanks to Lonnie,” says Ringo, who in an unlikely moment, plays the washboard."

This was a seriously well documented trawl through the life of the king of skiffle and his influence on the youth of Britain in the fifties. Ringo says that every street in Liverpool had a skiffle group thanks to Lonnie. John Lennon's band The Quarrymen were a skiffle group that Paul joined in 1957. The programme had a tiny clip of them playing on a lorry at that famous fete. Paul admitted that without Lonnie, The Beatles wouldn't have happened.

Jim Carter (three years younger than me) remembers wearing shorts until he was fourteen and that the highlight of the year in the fifties, The Great Yorkshire Show, was writing down number plates of the cars arriving and spotting where they came from. He got to see Lonnie live which is more than I did.

The biggest treat for me on the programme was to see Chris Barber, now in his mid eighties and looking fit. By the time I saw his jazz band at Dunmow in 1962/3 Lonnie had left. It was in 1952 that Lonnie joined the amateur Chris Barber Jazz Band as their banjo player. Another short film clip and some photos from those days were incredible. The band became professional and led the way in the traditional jazz revival. It was during the interval when the band took a break that a trio would stay and play some blues. Lonnie swopping banjo for guitar and vocals, Chris swopping trombone for bass and Beryl Bryden on washboard. These sessions were so popular, apparently, that on the band's new LP they included a couple of these songs.

I guess it was radio that picked up these recordings and encouraged the record label to put out Rock Island Line as a single in 1956 with John Henry on the B side. This kicked off the skiffle craze and the rest is history. Van Morrison told of starting a skiffle group called The Sputniks. Roger Daltry and Joe Brown gave Lonnie the credit for their careers.

Skiffle died with the onset rock and roll. Lonnie didn't embrace the new vogue but went the way of novelty songs. He toured his brand of skiffle and comedy right to the end. He was the first ever British rock star even though he never played rock.

Lonnie and Me: One of my first posts in 2007:

"When we lived in London in the 1950's, I can remember my brother and I being put in the care of the guard on the train from St Pancras to Rotherham to visit our grandmother (Nanan) in the summer holidays. She used to meet us at the station and take us to the semi on Wordsworth Drive. Still living at home with her were three uncles, all in their twenties. The youngest was Geoff and he was the one who owned "Rock Island Line" by Lonnie Donegan on a single 78 (rpm). During the day we were allowed to play this and an LP of Bill Haley's "Rock around the Clock". It was the single that I thought was magic, and it was played time and time again. It certainly has influenced my musical taste to this day. When Johnny Walker included requests in his Drivetime show on Radio 2, the four he played of mine started with "Rock Island Line"."

Rock Island Line was first recorded by Hudie Ledbetter (or Leadbelly) in the 1930's. Alan Lomax was collecting folk and blues numbers and on his travels with Hudie, heard this sung by a prison gang. Lonnie's recording is described on my posting in May this year:

"On July 13th 1954, Chris Barber and his jazz band went into the Decca studios in Maida Vale to record their first album. At the end of the session, they persuaded the producer to let them put down two "skiffle" numbers. With Chris on bass (quite a change from his usual trombone), Lonnie Donegan on guitar (He normally played banjo in the band) and Beryl Bryden on washboard, they recorded Rock Island Line and John Henry.
The album called "New Orleans Joys" was fairly popular. During the mid fifties, the band toured extensively, and the "skiffle" group always had a session in the middle. This was hugely popular and became quite notorious. This encouraged the record company to eventually release the two skiffle tracks from the album as a single in November 1955. By the following year, Rock Island Line had sold over 3 million copies and entered the top ten. John Lennon said he listened to it incessantly. He was not the only one. At my grandmothers in Rotherham, I must have worn out the 78. In my view, this was the first ever British guitar based popular/rock record. So July 13th 1954 is when it was born.
Early in 1956, Lonnie insisted he would not leave Chris Barber, and recorded more songs with him, even though later in the year he toured on his own in the USA. When he returned, his popularity was such, it was obvious he could not continue with the jazz band, and embarked on his successful solo career. In 1958, one of my favourite TV shows, "The Six-Five Special" (an early version of "Top of the Pops") was made into a movie, on of the first I saw at the cinema. Lonnie's Jack O'Diamonds was the highlight."

This was why I made Rock Island Line the first of my 131 songs. These days it sounds so flimsy it is almost embarrassing. But you cant change your past.