Lonnie Donegan

Lonnie Donegan

Lonnie Donegan MBE (29 April 1931 – 3 November 2002) was a skiffle musician, possibly the most famous of them all, with more than 20 UK Top 30 hits to his name. He is sometimes called the King of Skiffle and is often cited as a large influence on the generation of British musicians who became famous in the 1960s.

Early life and trad jazz

He was born Anthony James Donegan in Bridgeton, Glasgow, Scotland, the son of a professional violinist. His ethnic mix was Scottish/Irish. He moved with his mother to East Ham, London, at an early age, after his parents divorced. Inspired by blues music and New Orleans jazz bands he heard on the radio, he resolved to learn the guitar, and bought his first at the age of fourteen.

The first band he played in was the trad jazz band led by Chris Barber, who approached him on a train asking him if he wanted to audition for his group. Barber had heard that Donegan was a good banjo player; in fact, Donegan had never played the banjo at this point, but he bought one and managed to bluff his way through the audition. His stint in this group was interrupted, however, when he was called up for National Service in 1949.

In 1952 he formed his first group, the Tony Donegan Jazzband, which found some work around London. On one occasion they opened for the blues musician Lonnie Johnson at the Royal Festival Hall. Donegan was a big fan of Johnson, and took his first name as a tribute to him. The story goes that the host at the concert got the musicians' names confused, calling them "Tony Johnson" and "Lonnie Donegan", and Donegan was happy to keep the name.

In 1953 cornetist Ken Colyer, enjoying hero status for having spent time in a New Orleans jail (due to a visa problem), returned to England and took over the name of Barber's band, though it was very much a cooperative. With the new name, Ken Colyer's Jazzmen, the group, with Donegan, made its initial public appearance on 11 April 1953 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The following day, Chris Albertson recorded the group (as well as a Monty Sunshine Trio, with Donegan and Barber) for Storyville Records. These were Lonnie Donegan's first commercially released recordings.

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 July 1954 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 Donegan underwent further bypass surgery following another heart attack.

There was a reunion concert with the original Chris barber Band in Croydon in June 1975 - notable for a bomb scare, meaning that the recording had to be finished in the studio, though patrons were treated to an impromptu concert in the car park.

Then in 1994, the Chris Barber band celebrated 40 years, with a long tour with both bands, rather than just a concert. Pat Halcox was still on trumpet (and still is in 2006)! The reunion concert and the tour, were recorded on CD, and also on video (and later released on DVD, though the quality isn't up to digital standard). As is Chris Barber's normal style, he generously featured Lonnie in the concerts and the whole original band were much more relaxed than in 1954, making these real collectors items, as the stereo was real and not electronically created.

He experienced another late renaissance when in 2000 he released The Skiffle Sessions – Live In Belfast, a critically acclaimed album made with Van Morrison and Chris Barber, with a guest appearance by Dr John. He also played at the Glastonbury Festival, and was awarded the MBE in 2000.

His last CD was "This y'ere the Story", which tells his story - complete with the innaccuracies as to his introduction to the banjo and the Barber band as related above...

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.

He is known to have had a stockpile of many original tapes and hopefully some of these will eventually be released.

Quotations

• "In England, we were separated from our folk music tradition centuries ago and were imbued with the idea that music was for the upper classes. You had to be very clever to play music. When I came along with the old three chords, people began to think that if I could do it, so could they. It was the reintroduction of the folk music bridge which did that." Interview, 2002.
• "He was the first person we had heard of from Britain to get to the coveted No. 1 in the charts, and we studied his records avidly. We all bought guitars to be in a skiffle group. He was the man." -- Paul McCartney

Discography

• Rock Island Line/ John Henry (1955)
• Diggin' My Potatoes/ Bury My Body (1956)
• On A Christmas Day/ Take My Hand Precious Lord (1956)
• Lonnie Donegan Showcase (December 1956)
• Jack O'Diamonds/ Ham 'N' Eggs (1957)
• Lonnie (November 1957)
• The Grand Coulee Dam/ Nobody Loves Like An Irishman (1958)
• Midnight Special/ When The Sun Goes Down (1958)
• Sally Don't You Grieve/ Betty Betty Betty (1958)
• Lonesome Traveller/ Times Are Getting Hard Boys (1958)
• Lonnie's Skiffle Pt.1/ Pt.2 (1958)
• Tom Dooley/ Rock O' My Soul (1958)
• Tops with Lonnie (September 1958)
• Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour/ Aunt Rhody (1959)
• Fort Worth Jail/ Whoa Buck (1959)
• Battle Of New Orleans/ Darling Corey (1959)
• Sal's Got A Sugar Lip/ Chesapeake Bay (1959)
• San Miguel/ Talking Guitar Blues (1959)
• Lonnie Rides Again (May 1959)
• My Old Man's A Dustman/ The Golden Vanity (1960)
• I Wanna Go Home (Wreck Of the John B.)/ Jimmy Brown The Newsboy (1960)
• Lorelei/ In All My Wildest Dreams (1960)
• Lively/ Black Cat (Cross My Path Today) (1960)
• Virgin Mary/ Beyond The Sunset (1960)
• (Bury Me) Beneath The Willow/ Leave My Woman Alone (1961)
• Have A Drink On Me/ Seven Daffodils (1961)
• Michael Row the Boat/ Lumbered (1961)
• The Comancheros/ Ramblin' Round (1961)
• More! Tops with Lonnie (April 1961)
• The Party's Over/ Over the Rainbow (1962)
• I'll Never Fall In Love Again/ Keep On The Sunny Side (1962)
• Pick A Bale Of Cotton/ Steal Away (1962)
• The Market Song/ Tit-Bits (1962)
• Sing Hallelujah (December 1962)
• Losing My Hair/ Trumpet Sounds (1963)
• It Was A Very Good Year/ Rise Up (1963)
• Lemon Tree/ I've Gotta Girl So Far (1963)
• 500 Miles Away From Home/ This Train (1963)
• Beans In My Ears/ It's A Long Road To Travel (1964)
• Fisherman's Luck/ There's A Big Wheel (1964)
• Get Out Of My Life/ Won't You Tell Me (1965)
• Louisiana Man/ Bound For Zion (1965)
• The Lonnie Donegan Folk Album (August 1965)
• World Cup Willie/ Where In This World Are We Going (1966)
• I Wanna Go Home/ Black Cat (Cross My Path Today) (1966)
• Aunt Maggie's Remedy/ (Ah) My Sweet Marie (1967)
• Toys/ Relax Your Mind (1968)
• My Lovely Juanita/ Who Knows Where The Time Goes (1969)
• Lonniepops--Lonnie Donegan Today (1970)
• Lonnie Donegan Meets Leinemann (1974)
• Country Roads (1976)
• Puttin' On The Style (February 1978)
• Sundown (May 1979)
• Muleskinner Blues (January 1999)
• The song Lost John was used to open the John Peel tribute album
• This Y'ere The Story (2000?)
• The Last Tour (2006)

Trivia

• Lonnie Donegan is linked to Ronald Reagan twice over. They once appeared on the same Perry Como show. Woody Allen made his debut on the same show. When news of one of Lonnie's heart attacks reached Japan, the Tokyo stock exchange fell. This is because the words "Lonnie Donegan" sound similar to "Ronald Reagan" to Japanese ears.
• Musician Mark Knopfler released a tribute song to Lonnie Donegan on his 2004 album "Shangri-La" called "Donegan's Gone."
• Rock Island Line was featured in an advert for the Vauxhall Astra Twintop and Tigra in 2006 in the UK. Rock Island Line was originally written and recorded by Huddie Ledbetter, aka Leadbelly.
• Lonnie Donegan's music lived on in a musical starring his two sons. 'Lonnie D - The Musical' took it's name from the Chas and Dave tribute song which starts the show. Subsequently, Peter Donegan formed a new band and is now performing his father's material around the UK [1].

External links

• Official website Retrieved 15 January, 2006
• Go Lonnie go – article by Billy Bragg for The Guardian
• My Memories of Lonnie Donegan by Paul Griggs
• Lonnie Donegan
• Lonnie Donegan and his Skiffle Group
• Lonnie Donegan Discography
• His Old Man’s the Guv’nor – article by Alan Franks