‘It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it,’ sang the Desperate Bicycles on their self-funded debut single in 1977, summing up the punk belief that you didn’t have to be the world’s best musician before getting up on stage or making a record. Twenty years earlier, a previous generation learned a similar message from the skiffle explosion, which put guitars in the hands of many future members of the key British rock groups of the Sixties. It therefore seems appropriate that a musician first inspired by seeing The Clash has eventually written a book about skiffle.
Billy Bragg has a long-standing interest in the genre, and his passion for those early days of frantic strumming and washboard-driven rhythms is clear throughout his eloquent and thoroughly researched book. A hybrid musical form, skiffle had its roots in the jazz which developed in the wide-open Storyville district of New Orleans, but it also contained elements drawn from the blues, the protest songs of Woody Guthrie, prewar hillbilly tunes, prison work songs and the folk music of the British Isles and of Ireland.
Lonnie Donegan, the undisputed king of the movement, found his big opportunity while playing as a sideman with Chris Barber in Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen, stepping into the spotlight as part of a stripped-down ‘breakdown group’ at their shows, performing what was billed as a ‘skiffle’ session during intervals.
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