Lonnie Donegan RIP - ten years ago today.

[Roger Rettig]

Just published and highly recommended! At last a good writer has presented a balanced view of Lonnie - his talent, his ambitions and his flaws.

If you have any interest in the basics of British pop music you'll find this fascinating and, yes, Alexis gets his share of the credit too.

[Michael Breid]

Lonnie was a classic. First heard him in the early 50's. I wore out two 45's of Rock Island Line. I still have his "An Englishman Sings American Folksongs" album. Watch him all the time on YouTube. Wish I could have played music with him. Skiffle is a great music. Always liked it and really appreciated Lonnie for making it known worldwide.

[Roger Rettig]

Michael:

In the UK that was his first LP - a 10" album that sold in such prodigious quantities that it actually made its way into the singles charts! You'll see that it was called 'LD Showcase'. That Christmas (1956) it seems that every boy had to have a copy.

I wonder if any girls bought it... Lonnie's fans all seemed to be chaps!

Ours looked like this - was this the cover on your copy?

[Larry Bressington]

Great post Roger ode chap, and remarkable history.

[Alan Brookes]

It was Lonnie who influenced me to take up the guitar. I never missed his television programs, and I was an avid collector of his 45s and LPs. He was the inspiration behind the folk music boom in England in the 50s, but he introduced English people to American Folk Music mainly. It's because of his efforts that Woody Guthrie and Huddie Ledbetter had such an enormous following in England, and that led the way for Rambling Jack Elliott to come over and spend so much time there. Skiffle opened up music to a post-war generation who couldn't get their hands on proper instruments. With skiffle it didn't matter. You could always pick up a washboard and play it with thimbles, or a couple of spoons, or a comb and paper.
He had a gigantic influence on world pop music.

[Roger Rettig]

Same with me, Alan, except that I never felt that I could have ever come close to replicating what Donegan did - he and his band were far too good!

The music was simple in concept, though - while Lonnie's group had a Gibson guitar on lead, his Martin 000 (no-one else could get US guitars in the UK back then!), a proper upright bass and a professional drum-kit there's no doubt that we could at least follow the chord-changes and make feeble attempts to emulate him.

All the other skiffle groups were fairly fundamental (the Vipers, Chas McDevitt, etc) but Donegan remained a superior being by comparison! A huge influence, as you say.