[Dixielandjazz] FW: Lonnie Donegan

[Bill Haesler]

Dear DJMLers,
This came from a mate.
I found it to be very interesting and informative.
Kind regards,
Bill.

Father of British pop music and inspiration to the Beatles

by Robin Denselow
Monday November 4, 2002

Lonnie Donegan, who has died aged 71 was the first British pop superstar 
and the founding father of British pop music, and the musician who provided=
 
the original inspiration for John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and a host of 
others.
By the time the Beatles shook up the music world in the mid-1960s Donegan's=
 
glory days were over, and he had retreated to comedy and cabaret, but 
between 1956 and 1962 he notched up an incredible 26 hits.
Donegan was a musical phenomenon. As the leader of the skiffle craze, he 
inspired the formation of literally thousands of do-it-yourself bands 
across the country, and was directly responsible for the 1960s pop 
explosion that - ironically - was to severely damage his own career.
Rock Island Line, the song that transformed his life - and the history of 
British pop - was neither British nor contemporary, but written by the 
great black American folksinger, Leadbelly. Donegan began playing it as a 
member of the Chris Barber Jazz Band who specialised in the New Orleans 
classics, but included a splinter-group who bashed away at "skiffle" 
versions of American folk songs and blues during the intervals. Two such 
songs, Rock Island Line and John Henry found their way on to the Barber 
band's 1954 album, New Orleans Joys, but it wasn't until 18 months later 
that they were released, under Donegan's name, as a novelty single.
The reaction was extraordinary. Rock Island Line sold more than a million 
copies, and was the first British pop record to break into the American Top=
 
10, thanks to its vitality, rhythmic intensity and an earthy simplicity 
that - at the time - was simply unique in British pop.
Using a simple line-up of strummed guitar, bass and drums, he drawled, and 
then sang, his way through a story about a train driver fooling the 
inspector on a toll gate outside New Orleans. It was an extraordinarily 
exciting, brave and gutsy recording (as I remember from the shock waves it 
caused among my school friends when we first heard it). The wonder of it 
was that anyone with a cheap acoustic guitar, and who had mastered three 
basic chords, was able to attempt to imitate the Donegan style. British pop=
 
had arrived.
The man responsible was born Anthony James Donegan in Glasgow of an Irish 
mother and a Scottish father. His father was a violinist who at one time 
played with the National Scottish Orchestra and later joined the Merchant 
Navy. In 1933 the family moved to East Ham, London, and here, after the 
war, the teenage Donegan became an enthusiastic fan of the new trad jazz 
movement. He learned to play guitar and banjo and formed the Anthony 
Donegan Jazz Band - later to be shortened to Tony Donegan - which he 
financed through part-time delivery work for a photographer.
As an amateur, he practised and performed alongside other fans of New 
Orleans jazz, including trombonist Chris Barber, guitarist Ken Colyer and 
clarinet-player Monty Sunshine, and he kept in touch with them all after he=
 
was called up for national service in 1949. In the army he joined yet 
another band, the Wolverines, this time as a drummer.
After his discharge, he changed his stage name again - this time to Lonnie 
- after playing alongside his idol, American blues guitarist Lonnie 
Johnson. He then joined his old friends Colyer, Barber and Sunshine as the 
banjo-player in the Ken Colyer Jazzmen, and it was here that the 'skiffle' 
movement was born.
Jazz clubs in the early 1950s were often unlicensed, and the musicians 
would take regular breaks so their audiences could get a 'pass-out' for the=
 
nearest pub. Some entertainment had to be provided for those who remained 
behind, so Colyer and his band began playing and singing American folk 
blues songs. They took the term skiffle from a favourite record, Home Town 
Skiffle, a compilation of American jug band styles and western swing.
The Jazzmen split up because of Colyer's insistence that they should play 
in what he regarded as being the correct traditional style. The entire 
band, including Lonnie Donegan, left him to re-group as the Chris Barber 
Jazz Band, who gave their first performance at the 100 Club, London, on May=
 
31 1954. When they recorded their album, New Orleans Joys Barber insisted 
that it should include a full representation of their work - including 
skiffle songs, with Donegan singing.
Their record label, Decca, was unimpressed. It chose a whole series of 
instrumental tracks from the album as singles before reluctantly releasing 
Rock Island Line.
Donegan was now a major star, and he quit the Barber Band for a solo career=
 
and a contract with Pye Records. He moved away from blues and jazz to 
concentrate exclusively on skiffle, transforming American folk songs by 
adding in a hefty beat and his distinctive nasal twang. For six years, 
everything he recorded became a hit, and songs like Lost John, Bring A 
Little Water Sylvie, Cumberland Gap and Grand Coolie Dam followed each 
other into the charts as DIY skiffle bands across the country attempted to 
imitate his style.
But by the late 1950s it was clear that Donegan was not just interested in 
popularising the songs of black Americans like Leadbelly or white Americans=
 
like Woody Guthrie. He was evolving into an all-round entertainer and 
comedian in the tradition of British music-hall, as he showed in 1957 with 
his comic song Putting On The Style, and his first excursion into 
pantomime. The following year he appeared at a Royal Variety performance, 
and in 1959 recorded his million-selling Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its 
Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight - a new version of a Boy Scout favourite 
he had sung as a child. It reached number three in Britain, and number five=
 
in the United States. The following year he sold over a million records in 
Britain alone, with another novelty song, My Old Man's A Dustman, a 
re-write of a Liverpool folk tune and first world war marching song, 
up-dated with cockney jokes and lyrics, which topped the charts for four 
weeks.
Lonnie Donegan had carved out an impressive niche in the music world, but 
the move towards comedy and cabaret was his commercial downfall. The 
British music scene was changing rapidly, as those he had inspired to pick 
up a guitar looked for something new to follow the limitations of skiffle. 
Some went on to explore in greater depth the works of Leadbelly or Woody 
Guthrie and joined the new folk music movement. Others followed the route 
taken by Alexis Korner - once, like Donegan, a skiffle player with Ken 
Colyer - and became immersed in the new British blues scene, which inspired=
 
new bands like the Rolling Stones.
Donegan had cut himself off from all that, as he was to learn at the end of=
 
1962. He notched up his last big seller, Pick A Bale Of Cotton in August of=
 
that year, but in December, when he released a comic follow-up recorded 
with Max Miller, The Market Song, he found his string of hits had suddenly 
ended.
Members of a former skiffle band, the Quarrymen, had changed their name and=
 
style, and made their first chart entry with Love Me Do. Donegan was not 
amused. "The Beatles first records were old-fashioned, archaic 
rock'n'roll", he told me in the 1970s, "and I was resentful at the way they=
 
stopped my cash flow".
His glory days were over, but he kept going. He had set up his own music 
publishing company in the 1950s, and by the 1960s his publishing interests 
had become extensive. He also kept performing, playing the cabaret circuit 
in America, Australia and Britain. When I met him in 1974, after watching 
him give a cabaret show at the Penthouse Club, he was complaining at what 
had happened to the music scene and at its new heroes, the "long-haired, 
pot-smoking pop musicians".
Four years later, when his career had suffered a second blow, those same 
musicians attempted to give him a hand up. In 1978, Adam Faith persuaded a 
gang of rock world celebrities to get together with Donegan to re-record 
his old hits. Ringo Starr, Elton John, Ronnie Wood, Rory Gallagher and 
Brian May were among the extraordinary cast who joined him for his 
come-back album, Puttin' On The Style, which was launched in grand style 
with a party in the south of France. It was - predictably - something of a 
mess, but at least it sold reasonably well, and Lonnie was persuaded to go 
back on the road. A later album, Sundown recorded in 1980 with Doug 
Kershaw, attempted to mix skiffle with country, but by now public interest 
had faded once again.
For the past two decades he had survived on past glories, spending most of 
his time at his house in Malaga, Spain. In 1990 he became a father for the 
seventh time when his third wife, Sharon, gave birth to a son. He was still=
 
plagued by heart problems, he had further by-pass surgery in 1992, and as a=
 
musician he now seemed unsure which direction to take as he swapped between=
 
cabaret and skiffle revival shows. He even got back together with the Chris=
 
Barber Band for reunion concert tours, most recently in 1996.
Lonnie Donegan may have been the godfather of British pop, but at heart he 
was an updated music-hall performer, adrift in the wrong era. When I met 
him in the late 1970s he described himself thus: "I'm not a serious 
musician, because I don't have the capability, but I take my music 
seriously because I love music. And I'm a man who loves a laugh. So if 
there's no laugh, what's the point of getting up there?"
=B7 Anthony James 'Lonnie' Donegan, musician, entertainer, born Glasgow April=
 
29 1931, died November 3, 2002

Guardian Unlimited Arts