It is amazing how one can trace history of recent pop and blues to its origins through some songs, which to most of us now are unknown but played a major role in present popular music.
Rock Island Line is without any doubt such a song. It was ‘discovered’ by the famous American folklore recorders John & Alan Lomax in 1934 in a state prison in Arkansas, sung a capella by a convict named Kelly Pace. It was popularised by the very much underestimated Leadbelly in 1937. In 1955 it was taken up by Lonnie Donegan (Lonnie was not his real name – he named himself Lonnie in honour of the admired and influential Lonnie Johnson who also was the great inspriation of “Blues Boy” Riley King). Lonnie Donegan made a gigantic hit of it and started as it were the skiffle sound. Skiffle was a hybrid form of music combining traditional blues, country, folk, jazz and dixie. Lonnie Donegan himself stemmed from the famous Chris Barber Jazz band. Chris Barber, in essence a jazz artist (at his height in the 50 and 60) didn’t limit his musical horizon to jazz but included also the original american blues & chicago blues. He invited several of the famous blues artists (Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters e.a.) to tour in the UK, this much to the interest of young creative talent as Alexis Korner, John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Peter Green and the Rolling Stones. They absorbed the blues with so much enthousiasm that they boosted the british blues, went over to the US and brought about the blues revival in the US…
Amazing how all of this is so closely linked, no? Rock Island line : linking delta blues to the british invasion and blues revival in the US in the sixties….
Enjoy the following video’s from Leadbelly, Chris Barber and Lonnie Donegan.
I couldn’t resist including an early song by the Querrymen, one of the hundreds skifflegroups at the end of the fifties…Later they became more popular under the name…just slipped my mind…it’s back again : The Beatles.
My family and i came here seeing as this journal has been tweeted by a fellow I was following and feel delighted I made it here.
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