Now You Has Chas...

In those days I had three musical heroes to whom I swore allegiance and nothing in the considerable number of years between then and now has made me lose my faith in them. They were Elvis Presley, Jimmy Shand and Lonnie Donegan, and the one I hoped most to emulate, possessing neither the looks of Presley nor the musical dexterity of Shand, was Lonnie.

Doubling on guitar and banjo, he was forever known as the King of Skiffle but in reality he was a music hall performer, who didn’t take his music too seriously, even recording with such acts as Max Miller. Born in Glasgow, his father wasn’t a dustman (reference to hit song - ask your Granny) but a violinist with the Scottish National Orchestra. The family moved to London where Lonnie met trombonist and double bass player Chris Barber.

Skiffle
So what was skiffle? Well, it was a craze that captured the imagination of the teenagers of Britain in the mid 1950s. It was a home-grown British version of an equally home-grown American music known as jug band or spasm band music.

The word skiffle was originally applied to home-made vocal and instrumental jazz, performed at rent parties in the late 1920s in the USA. To this, Lonnie added an element of country-style singing and when he recorded Leadbelly’s Rock Island Line in 1954 with Chris on bass and Beryl Bryden on washboard, it was an immediate success, earning gold records in both the USA and Britain.

The music gained popularity in such surroundings as coffee bars, jazz clubs and even concert halls before being swamped by the tsunami of rock‘n‘roll (same number of chords, heavier bass.)

Thousands of youngsters took up the washboard, guitar and tea-chest bass and formed skiffle groups, some of which would provide the personnel for future rock legends. The Quarrymen became the Beatles, the Railroaders became the Shadows, and Van Morrison, Mark Knopfler, Albert Lee, Chris Farlowe, Roger Glover, Ralph McTell, Martin Carthy - and Rolf Harris - are just a few who acknowledge the influence that skiffle had on their careers.

From the original groups who spearheaded the boom in the mid 1950s, one of the survivors is another man who first saw the light of day in Glasgow; Chas McDevitt, whose group with Nancy Whiskey on vocals, had a world-wide hit with Freight Train.

The success of this record took the group on tour with such international acts as Slim Whitman, Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers and Freddy Bell & The Bell Boys, and they were the unlikely replacements for Jerry Lee Lewis on his ill fated 1958 UK tour.

Even more unlikely, in July 1957, fully six years before the Beatles did, Chas & his group appeared on television in the USA on the Ed Sullivan show in front of a viewing audience of 45,000,000 on the same programme as The Everly Brothers first performed Bye Bye Love.

Rock’n’Roll
By the mid 1960s, skiffle had been eclipsed by its upstart younger brother and Chas and the group joined the worldwide cabaret circuit, touring as support to the Beatles, Cliff Richard, the Shadows, the Dave Clark Five and Chubby Checker, as well as headlining their own shows in summer seasons. Chas began to devote much of his time to the show business charity The Grand Order of Water Rats, eventually being elected King Rat in 2003 and again in 2004, and is still an occasional performer on the skiffle scene.

Finally, if it’s anniversaries you’re after, fifty years ago this month Chas and Lonnie appeared in the first ever skiffle concert which took place in the even, even, even more unlikely setting of London’s Royal Festival Hall. I’ll leave the last word to my hero Mr D:

A dollar is a dollar and a dime is a dime; I’d sing another chorus but I haven’t got the time!