S
aturday 13 July marked the
65th anniversary of the day
Lonnie Donegan and a band of
musicians entered Studio 2 at the Decca
recording complex in West Hampstead,
London and cut a song that would alter
the face of British music for good. ‘King
Of Skiffle’ Donegan’s game-changing
recording of American folk song Rock Island
Line would set in motion a skiffle revolution
that ushered in – and melded with – the
rock’n’roll sound to give the Brit scene its
own unique flavour and inspire a legion of
musical greats to follow.
It was the popularity of teen flick
Blackboard Jungle and, in particular, its
theme – Rock Around The Clock – that led to
Rock Island Line being pushed as a single –
and it captured the zeitgeist and shot up the
charts. “Donegan’s incendiary delivery
is like a spark in a forest of dry timber,”
noted diehard Donegan nut Billy Bragg in
The Guardian.prison work group singing it in 1934. It’s
a song said to have its origins in the 20s,
when it was sung by Clarence Wilson and
his Rock Island Colored Booster Quartet, a
vocal group made up from workers on the
Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad.
It’s incredible to think that at almost
exactly the same time as Donegan was
waxing his breakthrough hit, over in the
US, in Memphis, a young Elvis Presley was
trying his luck at Sun Records for the very
first time. The making of kings on both sides
of the Atlantic – simultaneously.
Donegan’s tempo-shifted version of
Rock Island Line was the first debut record
to be certified gold in the UK and went
Top 10 in both the UK and US. The Decca
studio is now a rehearsal space for the
English National Opera, but passers-by
will notice a new addition to the exterior
of 165 Broadhurst Gardens: a blue plaque
to commemorate the historical session was
unveiled by Lonnie’s two sons.Celebrating 65 Years Of
Rock Island Line
“It was the
popularity ofBlackboard Jungle
and its theme – Rock
Around The Clock –that led to Rock
Island Line beingpushed as a single”
It’s a bizarre story. Inspired by his time
serving in the army in Germany and the
black American records he heard while
stationed there, Donegan would end up
revolutionising British music with a song
popularised by black bluesman Lead Belly
and originally catalogued by musicologist
and folklorist John A Lomax (Huddie
Ledbetter, aka Lead Belly, was his assistant
at the time) who recorded an ArkansasLonnie Donegan’s
speeded-up version of Rock
Island Line helped trigger the
skiffle craze in the UK10 VINTAGE^9 ROCK
Get
ty^ I
ma
ges