This post only concerns the first ever recordings of skiffle groups, how the name came about is for a later review of the book. Skiffle is now a much maligned word, if only Bill Colyer, who is credited with describing that kind of music had instead just used "blues", it would have far more resonance today. The first song on the first recording is Hard Time Blues.
This was by Ken Colyer's Jazzmen. Ken had returned from his sojourn in the USA and put together a trad jazz band that went on a tour of Denmark.It comprised Ken on trumpet, Chris Barber on trombone,Monty Sunshine on clarinet, Lonnie Donegan on banjo, Jim Bray on bass and Ron Bowden on drums. Chris Barber recalls "playing every night in Denmark, the band got better and better". That reminded me of another group getting better playing every night in Hamburg.
Chris goes on: "We also introduced (breakdown) sessions into our concerts. I'd been doing blues sessions with my previous band .... between numbers". That was with Alexis Corner on vocals, a piano, Barber on bass and later with Lonnie on guitar. In Denmark, it was Lonnie who sang some songs at the break, joined sometimes by Barber on bass, Ken on guitar and his brother Bob on washboard. At the Gentofte Hotel in Copenhagen, it was Karl Emil Knudson who organised a recording session in the ballroom, using just a Grundig tape recorder. The full set included those from the breakdown sessions. Bragg notes: "Although Knudsen recorded the band's whole set, the subsequent Storyville (Knudsen's own jazz label) releases only featured the trad jazz numbers - it would be years before the songs came to light".
Bragg points us to the Acrobat Music collection of Donegan recordings called Midnight Special: The Skiffle Years 1953-1957. The first four songs are those recorded by Knudsen in Copenhagen. The whole album is available on Spotify. The first song is Hard Time Blues, If it is Lonnie playing banjo, that is a little gem of an instrumental. His singing has gained confidence and musicality. Just a bass in the background was all that was needed. The bass seems to almost disappeared in the disappointing Nobody's Child but the following You Don't Know My Mind is, in my humble opinion,better than Lonnie's breakthrough record Rock Island Line. The last track could have been the best. But the vocals of Ken Colyer on Midnight Special are not a patch on Lonnie's. His harmonising dominates Ken's boring delivery. Lonnie contributes his banjo on all four tracks, but on later recordings he takes up guitar and it becomes a definitive song from the skiffle period.
The first studio recordings were made, not by Lonnie Donegan, but by Ken Colyer's Skiffle Group on 25th June 1954, at the Decca Studios, where they recorded three tracks on the album Back to the Delta.
This album was going to be just trad jazz tracks played by Ken Colyer's Jazzmen, but the breakdown sessions at his and Chris Barber's gigs (where Chris previously described those times a few members of the band played these blues/folk numbers while the rest of the band took a break) were so popular that they were included on the album. Bragg notes that during the recording of the jazz band, it was "the failure of (the) band to swing in the studio" and "desperate to salvage something from the session, that he (Ken) decided to play a few of those skiffle songs".
Ken Colyer's Jazzmen - Lord, Lord, Lord, You Sure Been Good To Me
Ken Colyer's Jazzmen - Faraway Blues
Ken Colyer's Jazzmen - Moose March
Ken Colyer's Skiffle Group - Midnight Special
Ken Colyer's Skiffle Group - Casey Jones
Ken Colyer's Skiffle Group - K.C. Moan
Ken Colyer's Jazzmen - Saturday Night Function
Ken Colyer's Jazzmen - Shim-me-sha-wabble
Ken's new line up for the skiffle numbers was:
Mickey Ashman (Bass), Alexis Corner (guitar and mandolin), brother Bill Colyer (washboard) and Ken on vocals and guitar. Ken's vocal does nothing to raise the tracks above the level of turgid. I was amazed to read so much about Ken Colyer's strict adherence to New Orleans jazz, that he still decided to record these numbers. But banjo had given way to guitar and that instrument was the future.
So why not Lonnie? He had left Ken's band to join the new Chris Barber Jazz Band on 31st May 1954. Apparently, the two had never got on. On 13th July 1954 (a date that marks the birth of British homemade guitar bands) they went into the same studio where the Ken Colyer band had been a couple of weeks before. Barber on trombone was joined by Pat Halcox on cornet, Monty Sunshine on clarinet, Lonnie Donegan on banjo, Jim Bray on bass and Ron Bowden on drums. All of them from the old Ken Colyer band that toured Denmark.
The band had played on Ken Colyer's succesful trad jazz recording New Orleans to London and this benchmark would be crucial in the new album called New Orleans' Joys.
Apparently, it was only because the band did not have enough material for an eight song 10" LP, that Lonnie suggested they record some skiffle songs. Barber let the band go and, having called Beryl Bryden to play washboard, he picked up Jim Bray's bass. The three of them recorded Rock Island Line, John Henry, Wabash Cannonball and Nobody's Child and the rest is history.
If you listen to those first two tracks that found their way onto the LP, you may agree with me that, by today's standards, they still sound perfect. Sometimes it is when perfection arrives by accident, that history is made. The combination of the three superbly played acoustic instruments (even the washboard is just right) and Lonnie's crystal clear voice places these recordings above anything that has been heard before.
The change from banjo in those 1953 Copenhagen recordings, to the guitar was part of the revolution. There is a photograph in Bragg's book of Ken Colyer's Skiffle Group in 1953 with Lonnie and Ken on guitar with brother Bill on washboard and Chris Barber on bass.
The LP wasn't actually released until January 1955. In May of that year, an enterprising producer called Dennis Preston brought together the members of the skiffle group, who still played in the breaks of the now very successful Chris Barber Band's concerts, to make a recording under the name of the Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group. With Lonnie and Dickie Bishop on guitar and vocals, Bray on bass and Barber on harmonica, and additional vocals from Bob Watson and mandolin by Pete Korrison, they recorded four tracks for an EP called Backstairs Session.
The tracks are Midnight Special, When the Sun Goes Down, New Buryin' Ground and Worried Man Blues. In my opinion, the vocals from Dickie Bishop are not in the same class as Lonnie's. The whole enterprise pails in comparison with those numbers on New Orlean's Joys.
At the end of 1955, Decca were struggling with Ken Colyer Skiffle Group single, and decided to release Lonnie's Rock Island Line, backed by John Henry, also as a single, on 11th November 1955. Making it's debut at number eight in the Record Mirror charts in December. At the start of 1956, Rock Island Line appeared in the New Musical Express charts at number seventeen. and then hit the top ten. It stayed in the top twenty for three months. Bragg includes the quotation "The first British artist to get into the charts singing and playing a guitar" and "Folk at a rock and roll tempo from an ex-jazz musician (playing a song) by a blues composer, Leadbelly".
In April it was followed by the single Stewball coupled with Lost John. Lonnie was still with the Chris Barber Jazz Band, but left when America beckoned in the May. He was truly on his way to stardom.
American record companies were so impressed with the success of Lonnie's song that was one of their own, they rushed to release their own versions. There are twelve listed on Wikipedia including those by Bobby Darin and Johnny Cash. None hold a candle to Lonnie's record. He became one of the first British artists to play in the USA (on the Perry Como Show) after the organisations (unions) in both countries at last made a reciprocal agreement. A ban on visits by the other countries musicians had lasted for years. As Bragg relates "Negotiations were under way to bring Elvis to the UK. Good luck with that". It never happened.
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