Vintage Rock journeys back to the uniquely British phenomenon of the Skiffle Craze, a grassroots musical explosion of the 1950s that transformed coffee bars into stages for raw, energetic performance. Not just a sound, but a cultural moment when British popular music found its voice through DIY creativity, optimism, and rebellious rhythm.
If a focus group aimed to pinpoint musical subject matter and a presentational style likely to appeal to youngsters, you wouldn’t imagine it would come up with skiffle. Story songs about railroads, hobos, shootings and judges, performed by friendly, often scholarly looking types in sweaters, relying on a lot of hard acoustic strumming, seem an unlikely order. Even the signature song of the genre, Rock Island Line, starts with a spoken preamble by Lonnie Donegan in a mangled “American” accent that goes on for almost a minute. Stan Freberg quickly latched on to these aspects of Donegan’s rendition in a brilliantly funny send-up of the song, paired with an equally spot-on parody of Heartbreak Hotel, on a Capitol Records single.
Yet for a short period between 1956 and 1958 the music was so popular in Britain the newspapers dubbed it the Skiffle Craze. Although British skiffle, whose foundations lay in the traditional jazz revival, had been around since the early 50s, performed live in clubs and church halls to receptive audiences, it was when Rock Island Line hit No.8 in the British Hit Parade at the start of 1956 that it really became a national phenomenon.
Grassroots Musical Explosion
Skiffle’s appeal was its unpretentiousness. It was upbeat and fun. Thoughtful types preferred the greater depth to be found in jazz, but a broader audience loved the immediacy of skiffle and its rhythmic emphasis. If the lyrics were sometimes melancholy, it didn’t really matter. And for untrained young musicians, it was easy to play. It was the ultimate do-it-yourself music. All you needed behind your vocalist was a couple of acoustic guitars, backed up by a homemade tea-chest bass, a washboard and maybe a kazoo. Chas McDevitt, probably the closest contender for Donegan’s “King of Skiffle” crown, liked to augment his vocals by whistling.
At the height of the craze, there were estimated to be between 30,000 and 50,000 skiffle groups in the country. Music shops did a roaring trade in guitars, suddenly elevated to the go-to instrument in popular music. It was reported that there were more robberies carried out on music retailers than jewellers. The quality varied but skiffle, alongside the concurrent jazz movement, offered an introduction to American blues, country and folk long before the 1960s’ folk and R&B explosion. An entire generation of British rock musicians cut their teeth on skiffle.
Why did it end so soon? Essentially, skiffle was a bit lightweight and friendly. Once electric rock, with its pouting frontmen and dangerous glamour, got going, it couldn’t compete. Yet there is still something exciting about hearing a line of acoustic guitars, a washboard and a string bass cracking along at a rapid pace. With an obvious kinship to rockabilly, skiffle still has a real buzz about it.
KEY SONGS
Down By The Riverside (Ken Colyer Skiffle Group)
B-side of a Decca 78 of 1955. This is skiffle as purist Colyer deemed it should be played, straightforwardly, without the histrionics that would soon rocket Lonnie Donegan into the pop stratosphere. Colyer’s whisky-tinged voice is backed by brother Bill (washboard), Alexis Korner (guitar), and a banjo and string bass. Likeable, but unlikely to spark a teenage revolution.
Rock Island Line (Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group)
Lead Belly number, recorded for the New Orleans Joys album. Put out as single by Decca 18 months later. Despite a slow start, the way the track picks up pace, Barber on string bass and Beryl Bryden on washboard simulating the quickening speed of a steam locomotive, along with Donegan’s rising excitement, was the template for the artist’s best skiffle numbers.
Frankie And Johnny (Lonnie Donegan)
This overfamiliar folk song would normally elicit the reaction, “Oh no, not again.” Yet Donegan tears into it like no other. The tension he builds and sustains across several verses feels unprecedented. John Peel reckoned it one of the most astonishing performances in recorded music. With Nick Nicholls and bassist Micky Ashman pounding out the rhythm on drums and bass, it’s practically heavy metal skiffle.
Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O (The Vipers)
The band who put The 2i’s club in Soho on the musical map, The Vipers thought they were onto a good one with their second single, a boisterous reworking of an Appalachian song. The Vipers rejigged the melody and lyrics, incorporating the latest buzz phrase “Daddy-O”. Recorded in a rush to stop Donegan getting his version out first, they made it to No.10, but were still nutmegged by Donegan’s bigger seller.
Cumberland Gap (Lonnie Donegan & His Skiffle Group)
The first skiffle No.1. It originated as an Appalachian fiddle tune. First recorded in the 1920s, Donegan’s 1957 version competed with, and inevitably outshone, those by his ex-band member Dickie Bishop and the luckless The Vipers. Listen to the way Donegan spurs on his magnificent guitarist Denny Wright, while working himself up into a frenzy. Unsurpassable.
Freight Train (Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group)
This reworking of an Elizabeth Cotten folk song, led by Nancy Whiskey’s plaintive vocal, is one of most beautiful skiffle records, deeply evocative of the era. Sadly, some gloss was taken off by a lawsuit from Peggy Seeger contesting song ownership, leading to an out-of-court settlement. McDevitt’s group were in the middle of a US tour at the time.
I’m Satisfied (Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group)
Chas McDevitt’s band tackled a wider range of material than many skiffle groups, backed up with good musicianship. Guitarist Bill Bramwell was an ex-jazzer. Marc Sharratt was one of the loudest washboard players on the skiffle scene, showcased here. There’s a clip of the group performing the song live on Top Of The Bill, Sharratt taking an extended solo.
Bring A Little Water Sylvie (Peggy Seeger, Isla Cameron and Guy Carawan)
Not everyone was over the moon about the high octane, loose approach to American roots music taken by the likes of Donegan, The Vipers and McDevitt. Peggy Seeger, as if admonishing of Donegan’s shamelessly yelping Top 10 version, gave this old song a distinctly prim reading. It’s still charming though.
Last Train To San Fernando (Johnny Duncan And The Blue Grass Boys)
Another of the most memorable numbers to emerge from the craze, albeit some would contest whether the bluegrass-influenced Duncan could truly be classed as a skiffler. The song was originally a calypso. This reworking, with a stop-time rhythm and another of skiffle’s steam train intros, was only kept off the UK No.1 spot by Paul Anka’s Diana.
Sizzlin’ Hot (Jimmy Miller And The Barbecues)
In 1957, Joe Meek was still an eager sound balance engineer at IBC Studios, in Portland Place, London. But with this effort, he became the first British engineer to be allowed to produce a record. His quarry was Jimmy Miller, lead singer of the reliably workaday Station Skiffle Group. The name change came in a bid to make them more marketable, but it didn’t sell.
THE KING OF SKIFFLE
Two thirds of the way into his single Lost John, Lonnie Donegan ad libs, “If anybody asks you who sung this song/ Tell them Lonnie Donegan been here and gone.” Few other British artists of the time, let alone skifflers, would have had the audacity to be so self-referential. If Elvis was the King of Rock’n’Roll, Lonnie, in a much smaller pool, was the King of Skiffle.
At first glance, you might think that was just hype. Armed with a wide perma-smile, his voice was thin and nasally. But he had a magnificently attacking approach to a song, unprecedented for a British singer of the time, starting his songs at a slow tempo, but steadily building up the excitement, urging along his guitar player, and working himself up into a frenzy of screams and shouts. There is even a squeal of jubilation during Wabash Cannonball.
He wasn’t universally popular. He pilfered unashamedly from America’s folk and blues archive. Were he around today some might accuse him of cultural appropriation, but such was the spirit of his approach he succeeded in making the songs totally his own – so much so that to go back to the originals is often a letdown. He was also an incorrigible upstager. Many on the traditional jazz scene which had nurtured him thought he was an upstart banjo player. Ken Colyer despised him. But his popularity with the public took him to another level. He was a rare Brit to go down well in America.
Yet he was not the master of all he surveyed. Unlike the King of Rock’n’Roll, who had a magnificent, versatile voice, the King of Skiffle was essentially at his best as a rabble rouser, singing and raging over a beat. His later comedy songs, though dated, work well, but attempts at sophisticated balladry were embarrassing. Sadly, just when he was enjoying a revival, he died of a heart attack, aged 71, in 2002.
SKIFFLE ON FILM
It is instructive that in Six-Five Special, the musical movie spin-off from the TV pop show, the penultimate act is Dickie Valentine, leaving Lonnie Donegan to close with The Grand Coolie Dam and Jack O’Diamonds. If such a film had been made a couple of years earlier, it would have been the popular belter Valentine who would have been the finisher. But these two songs are ample evidence of Donegan’s magnetic performing power, something that transcended the fact that when the film was released in March 1958, the Skiffle Craze was all but over.
In the Terry Dene star vehicle, The Golden Disc (1958), Nancy Whiskey sings her final recording with the Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group, Johnny-O. However, it’s Sonny Stewart’s Skiffle Kings, favourites at the 2i’s, accompanying her, miming to the recording. McDevitt’s group are seen in The Tommy Steele Story (1957), performing Freight Train.
ESSENTIAL READING
For years, the standard book on skiffle was Skiffle: The Definitive Inside Story by Chas McDevitt. Its author has always been at the centre of the British skiffle scene. Not only was he one of the genre’s outstanding exponents, he seems to have known everyone.
Although it looks back on the origins of skiffle among southern state migrants to the north of America in 1920s, its strength is the individual sections on each of the British skiffle groups that emerged in the 1950s and made it to the recording studio, as well as some of those who didn’t. There’s a detailed discography. The book, originally published in 1997, was updated by McDevitt and republished by Rollercoaster Books in 2012.
Billy Bragg’s Roots, Radicals And Rockers: How Skiffle Changed The World (2017) has a stronger narrative, making a link to the social forces that shaped the music, both in the US and, later, in Britain, and how it in turned helped shaped the popular culture that followed. Both books are essential to an understanding of the genre.
THE BIG THREE
Apart from Lonnie Donegan, only three other skiffle acts enjoyed chart recognition…
Ken Colyer and Chris Barber, from whose band Lonnie Donegan emerged, are two of the unheralded heroes of skiffle and much of the music that followed. They never had skiffle hits in their own right, however. Colyer, the ultimate purist, would have disdained the very idea. Barber was less of a stickler, scoring a Top 20 chart success in 1959 with the jazz-pop crossover Petite Fleur. But he was essentially a jazz man. After Donegan’s departure from his band, he did release one high quality EP, The Chris Barber Skiffle Group, which featured Donegan’s replacement, American Johnny Duncan. But from thereon Barber ignored skiffle.
Barber had initially taken on Duncan because of superficial similarities in his sound, and even his appearance, to Donegan. After six months with the Barber band, he was launched as a solo artist. Backed by a superb group, named The Blue Grass Boys, he scored a notable hit with Last Train To San Fernando. The flipside was Duncan’s own song, Rock-A-Billy Baby, showing an awareness of the changing trends. Two more singles, Blue Blue Heartache and Footprints In The Snow were high quality, and made the Top 30.
Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O
Technically, The Vipers Skiffle Group are second to Donegan in the chart stakes, as the only other skifflers to have notched two Top 10 hits, Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O and Cumberland Gap, both in 1957. Streamline Train, the same year, made the Top 30. Their shows were lively, but with the singing duties mainly shared between Wally Whyton and Johnny Booker, they lacked a vocal personality. Like Johnny Duncan, their sound got them a small rockabilly following.
The only skiffle unit apart from Donegan to crack the US was the Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group. There’s a photo of McDevitt and his band during the Soho Fair of 1957 in a mock up Freight Train float. The crowd lining the street is so large it’s spilling over onto the road. Although Soho was the spiritual home of British skiffle, the photo shows how the music caught the public imagination at the time, and how popular McDevitt was. For a while there was even a Freight Train Bar on Soho’s Berwick St. While McDevitt lacked Donegan’s nervy, almost alarming intensity, the energy and boisterous sense of fun of his singing and his band’s playing, well caught on their Oriole recordings, remain one of skiffle’s lasting pleasures.
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