Rock Island Line - The Song That Made Britain Rock

Billy Bragg's fine documentary basically follows the story in his book Roots, Radicals and Rockers as described in my bog posting of 28th February 2018 entitled "The First Skiffle Recordings".

But one thing that Billy missed in his programme Rock Island Line - The Song That Made Britain Rock was the first skiffle recording. This was by Ken Colyer's Skiffle Group who recorded Midnight Special, Casey Jones and  K.C. Moan on the album Back to the Delta which also featured five trad jazz numbers by Ken Colyer's Jazzmen. These were all recorded in Decca's studios on 25th June 1954.

Billy ignores these recordings and goes straight to a couple of weeks later when on  the 13th July 1954, Chris Barber's Jazz Band went into the same Decca studio to record the album New Orleans Joys. Like Colyer's album, Barber's contained skiffle tracks, this time there were four by the Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group.

What Billy missed was an idea of why Colyer's skiffle songs never made it, whilst Lonnie's paved the way for British rock. For me, Colyer's voice, and for that matter Dickie Bishop's vocals on Lonnie's next recording -  the EP Backstairs Session of May 1955, were never in the same class as Lonnie. So when, on the 11th November 1955 (16 months after it was recorded), Decca released the single Rock Island Line from the July 1954 recordings, the world would never be the same. As I posted earlier:

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.