SKIFFLE
Without skiffle there might have been no Quarrymen and hence no Beatles. Seen in retrospect on television, skiffle can seem
entertaining yet quaint, and yet before pelvic-thrusting took over
on the charts, skiffle was incredibly popular.
The term 'skiffle' had been used in the US in the 1930s to
describe the blending of blues and boogie woogie. In the 1950s in
the UK it referred to an improvised amalgam of jazz and country
blues, often played on simple instruments which could be made out
of household implements.
And it was simply HUGE, with Lonnie
Donegan alone racking up three Number One's - the best known being Does
Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On The Bed Post Overnight).
Skiffle was not closely comparable to rockabilly; among many
other differences it was more a deliberately amateurish recreation
of a folk idiom than a rush of blood to the vitals.
Nor were most
of the vaguely academic revivalists remotely similar to the newly
emerging American rockers: they would probably have been
disdainfully amused had anyone suggested they were.
It was the loose, rhythmic vitality of skiffle that was
distantly equivalent to rockabilly - that, and the fact that
anyone who could find three strummable chords on a cheap guitar
could have a go for himself.
Before Rock & Roll crossed the Atlantic the skiffle craze
was already spreading out from the jazz club circle of its
instigators. As the first shock-waves of rock arrived, Lonnie
Donegan was bounced into national prominence and seemingly every
street in Britain suddenly boasted an amateur skiffle group.
Although skiffle is often defined by its instruments, its
attitude may be its greatest gift to rock & roll. There was an
eccentricity and humour and feeling for the extraordinariness of
ordinary people at the heart of Donegan's skiffle which inspired
The Beatles and countless other bands in the late 50s and early
60s.
Skiffle would be ultimately trampled by the very beat bands it
spawned.
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