Showcase

WHAT NYMITH SAYS

If you've heard of Lonnie Donegan at all, it's probably as either "the king of skiffle" or as an early British (actually Scottish/Irish) influence on The Beatles. If you don't know what "skiffle" is and don't care who influenced The Beatles, this is where your discovery will end. And it is a downright criminal injustice that Donegan and this album especially, are not met with more appreciation.

Donegan was a huge seller in Britain back in the day - he'd played in a jazz band originally, with a "skiffle" break in the middle set where he would perform folk and blues. He took inspiration from Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie and Lonnie Johnson, and when he released a cover of Leadbelly's 'Rock island Line' as a single his career was set. What is skiffle, then? I'm sure there are technical differences but suffice it to say that skiffle is really just folk and blues ... sped up a bit. Lonnie Donegan Showcase is thus more of a precursor to Bob Dylan than The Beatles and it wouldn't be until Dylan's appearance that this mixture of substance AND bite would again be so fully combined. The American folk market was being taken over by musicologists and university students, people who saw the old songs as a sacrosanct institution and tried to preserve them pristine in amber, people like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. Donegan was, like all the British Invasion acts to come, just an overseas guy who liked the songs and wasn't too worried about his own authenticity. Unfortunately I can't find much info on these recording sessions or who played what on each track. Jazz guitarist Denny Wright's presence is the only one I can supply for you, and he adds plenty of neat guitar flourishes.

So what you get with this hard to find record is a set of eight blues and country songs popularized in the early 20th Century by artists ranging from Jelly Roll Morton to Leroy Carr. Donegan, like most British singers of the war and postwar generations, had a highly emotive voice and was a more than credible blueswailer (he could get a lot of air into his lungs). But the most important fact is that Showcase just plain rocks. One listen to 'Wabash Cannonball,' a perfectly ordinary country song that Roy Acuff made a huge hit out of in 1936, will prove it to you. Acuff's version is pleasant, by-numbers balladeering - Donegan took the same song and dialed it up a notch. It bounds along at such speed, played and sung with such gusto that this is nothing less than folk-rock.

Compare his version of 'Wreck of the Old '97' (a tale of a gruesome trainwreck) with that of Johnny Cash. Cash sings it sternly enough, but Donegan is the more moving as he wails "don't ever say harsh words to your true loving husband / he may leave you and never return!" He conveys a greater sense of urgency, as if the wreck occurred not in 1903 but yesterday. It's a gritty, high-energy tactic that he uses with most of the material - even the sole sentimental ballad 'Nobody's Child,' in which a blind orphan boy thinks wistfully of "the streets of heaven / where all the blind can see..." It's pretty much the weakest song on the record but it's still sung with commitment and pathos. Energy and emotion are wrung out of every song. Even if he starts out singing in a funny, laid-back register like on the piano-driven 'How Long, How Long Blues,' he taps into the song's worried undercurrent and by the crescendo you can hear him just lose it and start wailing in earnest, taking Leroy Carr that one step further in interpretation.

I can point to every track and say something specific about them: 'I Shall Not Be Moved' is an old spiritual, usually sung with great gravity for that reason (check out Mississippi John Hurt's excellent rendition). Donegan and his band decide to emphasize its inherent optimism, rendering it into a completely infectious and jaunty little number with maracas (I'm guessing?) and patchy harmonies. Delightful. 'I'm Alabammy Bound' is a quirky little tune distinguished by the deep echo of Denny Wright's voice and on the opposite side of the spectrum, the stark ballad 'I'm a Ramblin' Man' gives Lonnie an excellent chance to play the anti-hero.

The best of the best is saved for last: a red-hot take on none other than 'Frankie and Johnny,' a song I have despised in all incarnations until this one. He'd played it for roughly ten years before recording it and in that time altered the melody to be less Tin Pan Alleyish and transformed it into a TRUE murder ballad - a boiling kettle of desperation with no condolences. "This story ain't had no moral / this story ain't got no end..." Lonnie howls and raves with the best of them and nobody could ever do this song greater dramatic justice. It is epic and the icing on the cake lies in how the band manage to coax a heavy, hazy sound from their instruments that fuels the intensity and is way ahead of its time. Put all together and it's not much of an exaggeration to call this heart-stopping.

This is nothing short of the greatest album of 1956. Fine musicianship played with an edge, smart song selection and a singer who sounds like he means every word of it. That's perfection in any era. Seek this record out!

WHAT TICHARU SAYS

Relegating this marvellous record, let alone this fabulous performer to something called "skiffle" is as ridiculous as most labels they attach to things. I mean, it's fine if a performer is trying to fit into a specific genre. Then you can accuse them of contriving something for a market. Well and it might be true, most performers are trying to make themselves marketable and what's wrong with that? A shed load of boring music, films, books, etc. That's what wrong with that! So we cry out for something original and then when someone like Lonnie Donegan comes along and hits us over the head with something that's just so full of life, what do we do? Some idiot calls it "skiffle" and consigns it to the dustbin of history. Such a shame, but here at The Cold Coffee Music Library we are trying to call your attention to some great artists you may have overlooked.

When I first heard this record I was gobsmacked! I heard hints of Patti Smith and The Velvet Underground. I thought I was listening to something that had fallen through a time loop portal. I have since settled into the realisation that Lonnie Donegan was a genius. Is that a strong term, bandied about a bit too frequently? Genius is always at the heart of great music. What Lonnie Donegan recorded to tape in 1956 was nothing but genius.

How are you going to find this record? Pretty tough. You can find 100 song collections of his music on your streaming audio services, collections galore, quite the mess. It seems that any fool can licence these older recordings and put them out with whatever horrible artwork and it's up to the listener to wade through. The only clue I can give you is, find the early recordings, you won't be disappointed. Find the songs on this record. It was called Showcase. It should be in your collection!