 | Lonnie Donegan: Encyclopedia II - Lonnie Donegan - Skiffle
Lonnie Donegan - Skiffle
Donegan was the first person to become famous playing skiffle in the United Kingdom, and went on to have an influential hit in Britain and the U.S.A.. At the time he sang and played both guitar and banjo for Chris Barber's Jazz Band, and began providing what he called a "skiffle" break during the intervals. With a washboard, a tea-chest bass and a cheap Spanish guitar, he had a lot of fun entertaining the audiences with folk songs and blues by artists such as Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, casually giving the impression that anyone could do it. This proved so popular that in 1955 he recorded a fast-tempoed version of Leadbelly's "Rock Island Line", with Chris Barber's Jazz Band, featuring a washboard but not a tea-chest bass, with John Henry on the B-side. It was an enormous hit in 1956, but ironically, because it was a band recording, Lonnie made no money from it beyond his original session fee. It was the first debut record to go gold in Britain, and reached the top ten in the United States, and Donegan has suggested that it might have influenced the beginnings of white rock and roll. The skiffle style encouraged amateurs to get started, and one of the many skiffle groups that followed was The Quarry Men formed in March 1957 by John Lennon.
After splitting from Barber, he went on to make a series of popular records, with successes including "Cumberland Gap" and "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose It's [sic] Flavour on the Bedpost Over Night?". He turned to a music hall style with "My Old Man's A Dustman" which was not well received by skiffle fans, but reached number one in the UK singles charts.
Donegan was unfashionable and generally ignored through the late 1960s and 1970s (although he wrote "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" for Tom Jones in 1969), and he began to play on the American cabaret circuit. In 1976, he suffered his first heart attack while in the United States and underwent quadruple bypass surgery. He returned to the public's attention in 1978, when he made a record of his early songs with such figures as Ringo Starr, Elton John and Brian May called Putting on the Style. In 1992 Donnegan underwent further bypass surgery following another heart attack. He experienced another late renaissance when in 2000 he released The Skiffle Sessions – Live In Belfast, a critically acclaimed album made with Van Morrison. He also played at the Glastonbury Festival, and was appointed MBE in 2000.
Donegan's influence on the generation of musicians that followed him is unquestioned. He inspired both John Lennon and Pete Townsend to learn to play the guitar, and was responsible for hundreds of other skiffle groups being formed. One of them, The Quarrymen, later evolved into The Beatles.
He died after a final heart attack in Peterborough, mid-way through a UK tour and shortly before he was due to perform at a memorial concert for George Harrison. He had suffered several heart attacks in the years leading up to his death at age 71.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Skiffle", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
