LONNIE DONEGAN
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1955–2000 |
Skiffle |
Nobody’s Child (1956) |
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Album
released: Dec. 1956 |
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Tracks: 1) Wabash Cannonball; 2) How Long,
How Long Blues; 3) Nobody’s Child; 4) I Shall
Not Be Moved; 5) I’m Alabammy Bound; 6) I’m A Ramblin’ Man; 7) Wreck Of The
Old 97; 8) Frankie And Johnny. |
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Like
just about everybody else, I imagine, my first and only knowledge of Lonnie
Donegan — for a long, long, long time — was that he was the father (or, at
least, one of the main fathers) of «skiffle», some sort of cheap-brewn
British folk-rock which happened to be very influential on the Beatles and
just about every other British Invasion act for the mere reason that it happened. And, like everybody else, my
only actual exposure to Lonnie Donegan was through a brief televised clip of
‘Rock Island Line’, a snippet of which is always included in every Beatles
documentary because there is hardly any other documented evidence of Lonnie
Donegan in his prime — that is, between 1955, when the ‘Rock Island Line’
single introduced him to nationwide audiences, and 1962, when his
significance was essentially cancelled with the arrival of Merseybeat and mop
tops. Is
there actually a good reason, then, to dig up these old records other than
teach yourself an extended history lesson? Yes and no: it is downright
impossible to evaluate or even properly enjoy Lonnie’s music outside of the
context of what it was influenced by and
what it ended up influencing — but within
that context, Lonnie Donegan Showcase,
an album covering two days’ worth of recording and an age’s worth of
tradition, is a fascinating relic with its own limited charm and even its own
unique spirit. |
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The fact that information on «skiffle» is usually
fed to us in between information on Elvis Presley and information on the
Beatles may result in thinking that «skiffle» was some sort of early British
rock’n’roll, like Billy Fury or Johnny Kidd. In reality, the skiffle movement
was a British tribute to rural Americana — a blues / folk / country mix
sucking in everything from the Delta to Appalachia and trying to sound as
authentic as possible. The very point is that you have to hear Lonnie sing and believe he was born in Alabama,
rather than in Glasgow, England — and if you do not, you are one mean party
pooper. In the absence of real American heroes across the Atlantic (their
tours in the Fifties were extremely rare), there just had to be some sort of
local substitute, and Lonnie was happy to oblige, going as far as to dump his
background in jazz (he used to play banjo with Chris Barber) in order to
satisfy the public demand for Leadbelly, Big Bill Broonzy, Woody Guthrie, and
Jimmie Rodgers all at the same time. Much to Lonnie’s credit, he does a pretty good job
with it. His chief asset is his singing voice — tense, sharp, raspy, capable
of maintaining and building up excitement over a pretty long time: hear him
here, for instance, belting out a five-minute long version of ‘Frankie And
Johnny’ with each following verse (a few of which he improvised himself)
shriller and wilder than the next one. Ironically, this may be the one thing
that actually betrays his authenticity: none of the blues or country heroes
whose material he is interpreting used to be that ecstatic and jumpy on their records, or else they would
probably have been booted out of their studios before completing the first
take. The vocal energy which Donegan brought to the hypnotized British kids
was indeed pure rock’n’roll, more in line with Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee
Lewis than with Big Bill or, for that matter, even with Johnny Cash — making
the man, in a sense, Britain’s first genuine «folk-rocker». But while ‘Frankie And Johnny’ does indeed «rock»,
and so do a few of the album’s faster numbers like ‘Wreck Of The Old ’97’,
Lonnie can also come across as a subtle and sensitive balladeer: arguably the
major highlight on here is Hank Snow’s ‘Nobody’s Child’, which the man
transforms into a captivating journey across moods and registers before
pulling all the stops at the end with an all-out heroic delivery of the final
verse. It may all be a little theatrical, sure, but given that Lonnie clearly
does not have the strongest or deepest voice in the world, the way he is able
to perfectly control it and mold it into sheer tenderness or pure desperation
within seconds is extremely impressive. The musical backing, as befits a bona fide skiffle
band, is minimalistic throughout, but far from laughable: Denny Wright was a
professional jazz guitarist who could easily recalibrate his skills towards
Delta blues — check out his acoustic soloing on ‘I’m A Ramblin’ Man’, which
could hold its fair ground against the average black bluesman; and the
quirky, plaintive licks on ‘Nobody’s Child’ complement Lonnie’s mourning
vocals ideally. Meanwhile, Micky Ashman adds solid bottom with his bass hops
on the fast numbers (‘Wabash Cannonball’), and drummer Nick Nicholls is quite
the wild man on ‘Frankie And Johnny’, playing in a rough, burly style that
could almost seem proto-punkish for 1956. All in all, I have to admit that this is a much
better Showcase for the man than
the quotation from Roger Daltrey would have you believe ("I wanted to be
Elvis Presley when I grew up... but the man who really made me feel like I
could actually go out and do it was a chap by the name of Lonnie Donegan").
Lonnie Donegan did help open the floodgates, and from a historical point of
view, this was unquestionably his main achievement. But the LP shows that he
was more than just «the first guy who dared to do it»: he also had an
above-average voice and an exquisite charisma to do it, and his band had the above-average
chops to help him do it. The best of these recordings still hold up today:
play ‘Nobody’s Child’ or ‘Frankie And Johnny’ in the supermarket and I am
sure that people will stop, listen,
and wonder. And even if it may seem funny to hear a bona fide Glaswegian sing
‘I’m Alabammy Bound’, in a certain way it was
true: he is not singing ‘I’m Alabammy Born’,
after all, he is Alabammy Bound,
and at the time, he most definitely was. You might even say he made it
further on his way there than the absolute majority of those who followed in
his footsteps. |
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Album
released: Nov. 1957 |
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Tracks: 1) Lonesome
Traveller; 2) The Sunshine Of His Love; 3) Ain’t No More Cane On The
Brazos; 4) Ain’t You Glad You Got Religion; 5) Times Are Getting Hard, Boys;
6) Lazy John; 7) Light From The Lighthouse; 8) I’ve Got Rocks In My Bed; 9) Long
Summer Day; 10*) Aunt Rhody; 11*) Whoa Back, Buck. |
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It
might be a little too much, perhaps, to seriously talk about «artistic
growth» when talking about Lonnie Donegan, the man who found himself a
working formula and rode it all the way to the bank and, later on, all the
way to oblivion. But it could still be argued that Lonnie’s self-titled
second album was notoriously less «commercial» than the debut, moving into
deeper, more spiritual territory — without losing the quasi-rock’n’roll
exuberance of its predecessor, but opting for a darker, less playful tone all
the same. There are some old timers out there who actually point to Lonnie as his masterpiece, and after
a couple of listens I can hear why. |
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For one thing, the album features a different style
of production: throughout the sessions, Lonnie moves in closer on the mike,
dropping the echoey effect which instantaneously gave him a sort of «star
vibe»; ‘Wabash Cannonball’ gave the impression of an aspiring young artist
giving it his all at some sprightly TV audition, but ‘Lonesome Traveller’,
opening this record, rather gives us a weary, slightly melancholic old
troubadour, with a sack of humble charisma making up for the lack of grizzly
authenticity. In fact, it is generally easier to forget that you are really
dealing with an impersonator over the course of these songs than on Showcase, perhaps, ironically,
precisely because Lonnie isn’t trying that
hard. On songs like ‘Times Are Getting Hard, Boys’, he adopts a soft,
introspective vocal tone, with occasional elements of recitative, and never
strays far from his middle range; on ‘Light From The Lighthouse’, he leads
his backing lads in an expectedly rousing spiritual, but does so with
restraint and playfulness rather than trying to throw a possessed spiritual
fit in an African American manner. None of these tunes feature the sort of
audience-inciting tricks he’d do so expertly with ‘Rock Island Line’ — which,
I might suggest, makes the average performance here less exciting and less
annoying at the same time. Of note is the presence of electric instrumentation
on a few of the tracks: in particular, the lengthy blues number ‘I’ve Got
Rocks In My Bed’ features several decent, though not outstanding, electric
solos — perhaps this could be enough to label Lonnie as the UK’s first
electric bluesman (at the very least, this definitely precedes Alexis
Korner). I honestly have no idea whether a move like that could be considered
traitorous in the skiffle movement circa 1957, but it definitely does not
help out much: Lonnie is still at his best not when he delivers a textbook
case of slow 12-bar blues, but rather when he revs it up on numbers like the
closing ‘Long Summer Day’, a song where you have to listen really hard to
realize that it is a slave working song because here, it is really all about
the little man slowly whipping himself into a trance — here, it is all about
vocal acrobatics in which the line "long summer day make a white man
lazy" is used more like a gymnastic ribbon than a genuine sarcastic
slogan. And it works — an album that began by putting you in a grim mood
eventually snaps out of it and leaves you with a spinning head and an overall
positive vibe. |
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Album
released: May 1959 |
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Tracks: 1) Fancy
Talking Tinker; 2) Miss Otis Regrets; 3) Gloryland; 4) Jimmy Brown The
Newsboy; 5) Mr. Froggy; 6) Take This Hammer; 7) The Gold Rush Is Over; 8) You
Pass Me By; 9) Talking Guitar Blues; 10) John Hardy; 11) The House Of The
Rising Sun; 12) San Miguel. |
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REVIEW
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One does not need to go much further, though, than
Lonnie’s next LP from the same year to witness just how much more breadth and depth this guy had in his prime.
Even though he probably never saddled an actual horse in his life (at least,
there is definitely no photo evidence in close reach), Lonnie Rides Again is as good a metaphor as possible for this
collection, showing him in total control of his folk, blues, ballad, and
spiritual instincts; I think that the only place where he actually falters is
the closing ‘San Miguel’ — I mean, «cultural appropriation» is one thing when
a Scotsman brews up a telepathic connection with his close-of-kin across the
Atlantic, but an entirely different one when he sends out his vibes across
the Mexican border, the final result giving off a rather comic and instantly
dated impression. Fortunately, it is just a very short piece, and it closes
the album, so you can just shut it off one song early. Other than that, it is all good — as usual, never
truly exceptional, but consistently listenable and enjoyable. There are only
but a few flirtations with rock’n’roll, most notably on the opening number,
‘Fancy Talking Tinker’, Lonnie’s reworking of a traditional folk melody
chiseled into the form of a pop-rock (pop-blues?) tune with first-rate
electric guitar backing (from Denny Wright, probably) and Lonnie’s
half-yodeling, half-rock’n’roll-growling vocal build-ups making these
particular deliveries of the age-old cliché "I’m on the road
again" almost unforgettable. Another fast-rolling kicker is ‘Gloryland’,
which, I guess, sounds exactly as it would end up sounding if you took Blind
Willie Johnson, gave him a rhythm section, turned up the speed, and made him
inhale a couple of helium balloons before recording — and yes, that’s a
compliment. In a way, it is almost a psychedelic experience hearing Lonnie go
through all the different vocal ranges and intonations as he turns the second
half of the song into a half-comical, half-humble shamanistic experience. As
cartoonish as it all may feel next to the old African-American spirituals he
is «emulating», the one thing that is absolutely real and genuine is Lonnie’s
ability to send himself off into an exuberant trance — and spread that
feeling around. On the slower (and
occasionally creepier) side, Lonnie pays homage to Cole Porter with the
murder ballad ‘Miss Otis Regrets’ (now here’s one definitely not for the kids), to the Foggy Mountain Boys with a
highly credible rendition of ‘Jimmy Brown The Newsboy’, to Leadbelly with
‘Take This Hammer’, and to Hank Snow with ‘The Gold Rush Is Over’. He also
delivers a pretty mournful version of ‘The House Of The Rising Sun’ (probably
the first version of the song recorded on the other side of the Atlantic?),
going for extra expressivity wherever possible — though never reaching the
level of paranoia in Bob Dylan’s early cover, let alone the thunderstorm
vibes of the Animals. Nevertheless, the atmosphere never truly rubs you the
wrong way; like I said, ‘San Miguel’ is probably the only true misstep on the
record. If there are any general
complaints, it is only that there is not a single attempt at growth: other
than, perhaps, the backing band sounding even tighter and more polished than
before, this is just another handful of Americana, tastefully selected from
his idols and presented in a pleasant and respectable manner. But this is
exactly what Lonnie wanted to do — he had no serious artistic ambitions
whatsoever and no Bob Dylan to show him the way it could be done. And who
could blame him? The man had chosen to do one job — act as an authentic
mouthpiece for grassroots American music in front of British audiences — and
he did it to the best of his (and everybody’s) abilities. |
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Album
released: Dec. 1962 |
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Tracks: 1) Sing Hallelujah; 2) We Shall
Walk Through The Valley; 3) No Hiding Place; 4) Good News! Chariots A’Comin’;
5) Steal Away; 6) Noah Found Grace In The Eyes Of The Lord; 7) Joshua Fit De
Battle Of Jericho; 8) His Eye Is On The Sparrow; 9) Born In Bethlehem; 10) This
Train; 11) New Burying Ground; 12) Nobody Knows The
Trouble I’ve Seen. |
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REVIEW
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However, before vanishing
into obscurity, Lonnie managed to leave behind what was arguably his most
ambitious project: a full-fledged gospel album. Prior to that, he’d taken on
the gospel spirit every once in a while (‘Light From The Lighthouse’, etc.),
but this time his selection of cherished folk standards is strictly
conceptual. Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that Mr. Donegan
had suddenly found the Lord (he might have, I have no idea, actually), but
rather with the fact that he wanted to make good use of the LP medium: with
the idea that LPs should not be collections of singles but rather artistic
entities in their own right seemingly more popular in the UK than in the US
at the time, it is no wonder that Sing Hallelujah does not reproduce
any of Lonnie’s 45" records, but instead paints a wholesome picture of
the artist as a God-fearin’ and a God-lovin’ man. It is much more of a
wonder, though, that it does so quite convincingly and, in places, even admirably well. Of course, there is no
huge difference between this album and Lonnie’s typical skiffle output. This
is not «gospel» in the solemn Mahalia Jackson sense of the word: this is
largely folk-gospel, with the main difference being the religious rather than
secular nature of the lyrics. On some of the tracks, Lonnie and his backing
band are fortified by some extra choir singers, but that’s about it —
otherwise, we have just the same folk-blues and country-blues melodies, and
the same vocal style which hasn’t evolved all that much since 1956. But
neither has it deteriorated or lost its charisma; Lonnie’s thin, frail, but
highly flexible and, at times, surprisingly determined tenor voice, when it
enters religious mode, can often bring forth the same kind of vibe that you
get from, for instance, George Harrison’s solo records — a sense of
«conviction through weakness», the faint intuitive understanding that you are
witnessing a frail and insecure human being attempting something overtly
courageous, taking a crazy risk which can pay off only if you manage to put
all of your heart in it. It all begins already on
the title song, where Donegan sets himself the mission of impersonating a
zealous preacher, capable of lighting the Lord’s fire in his listeners’
hearts — a pompous track, punctuated by deep bass, almost jungle-level drums,
and swampy electric guitar licks, while Lonnie himself skilfully relies on
the quiet-to-loud vocal dynamics to mark that exact «jump of courage» I’m
talking about. It might not be true fire-and-brimstone level, but I find the
effect believable and inspiring, and definitely going beyond the level of
«cute little Scotsman impersonating a deep Southern preacher man for the local
sailors’ amusement»; in fact, I might have felt even more respect for the
track had I never known the artist behind it in the first place. A lot of the other tracks
are less overtly spiritual in atmosphere, closer to the slight-and-joyful
merry-go-rounds for which Lonnie was already well known — ‘No Hiding Place’,
‘Chariots A’-Comin’, ‘This Train’, etc. — but Lonnie is at his best here on
the more quiet, intimate tracks, such as ‘His Eye Is On The Sparrow’, which
he performs in the tender, sentimental style of the Everly Brothers, and
‘Steal Away’, which gets an arrangement not unlike a romantic Elvis ballad
from one of his soundtracks, and features one of Donegan’s most exquisite
vocal performances. But the best is saved for
last, because Lonnie’s rendition of ‘Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen’ may
easily be the best of all the versions
of this tune that exist — and I have heard quite a few, but most of them were
either too happy (Louis Armstrong), too overdramatized (Mahalia Jackson), too
poppified (Sam Cooke), or too restrained by instrumental and vocal
conventions of the respective age (Marian Anderson’s performance from 1924 is
outstanding, but much too academic-operatic, if you get my drift). Lonnie
takes it as a torch ballad of sorts and uses each square inch of his vocal
powers to do precisely what the song requires to do — convey a full spectrum
of emotions from utter depression and desperation to undefeatable optimism
and hope for a light in the darkness. The man clearly gets it, and is able to
make you get it. This is not
imitation; it is a deeply personal interpretation of a hymn which may be
relevant for us all, Christian or not, beautifully performed in the
quintessential humanistic spirit. It is much too sad that, even in the hearts
of those few aging fans who still remember Lonnie with nostalgia, he will
probably be forever present with that ‘Chewing Gum’ song rather than this absolutely phenomenal
performance. Ultimately, if you ever
find yourself doing an inquisitive sweep-up of neglected pre-Beatles music,
do not forget about this record. It gets a pitifully low rating on
RateYourMusic, probably from people who did not even listen to it in the
first place but simply dismissed it because, come on, skiffle clown Lonnie
Donegan singing gospel? what a joke, right? Wrong: as Shakespeare already
would have us know, clowns are often more intelligent, sensitive, and humane
than Serious Artists, and I personally would take Lonnie’s idea of a gospel
album over ninety percent of gospel artists I have heard. Because it is one
thing to inspire respect and reverence, and quite another thing to actually
endear yourself to the listener by performing century-old museum pieces like
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