Lonnie Donegan

Again, it was the feel.

And we were just chugging along, doing Lonnie Donegan and stuff.

And then they let me do a Presley song.

And I forget which one it was.

And went, "Oh my God, that, that's what I want." And, uh, but it was unaffordable, and then my father had to go off to England to try and get work.

And so my, then Lonnie Donegan came on the scene, and Elvis Presley not long after, so the guitar was starting to come to the fore.

And my mother bought him, uh, a little plastic ukulele one, which he wanted the Lonnie Donegan model, but the one that arrived was the Elvis model.

And, uh, so he s- he started on it, even though it was, he could get a tune out of the four strings.

And, uh, it just evolved from there.

They were broadcasting all the, uh, American music, which was new, but essentially was a lot of jazz and the jazz hour, you know.

And I'd be scared listening to the radio because Rory would have snuck in when my parents would be in next door with the, the cousins, and he'd, like a kid would surf the internet, Rory'd find all the stations, and he'd, he'd find, uh, Chris Barber's jazz hour.

And then Chris Barber, an unsung hero for everyone because he was bringing over Sister Rosetta Tharpe, uh, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and he'd feature them on his show, as well as his banjo player was Lonnie Donegan.

And in the very early music programs on television, we were in Derry in the North at that time.

So they'd have Six Five Special with features on Lonnie Donegan and people like that.

But Rory knew all the words and we'd be standing outside the store where the new televisions were, but they'd close at six o'clock.

So you didn't get audio.

And Rory would stand there and sing the words to Lonnie Donegan's Rock Island Line or whatever the song was and entertain people.

So it just had this incredible gene, you know, from both my mother and her dad.

Yeah.

It's like a smell for film.

And maybe this is more applicable for the Brits on this conversation, but even though it makes sense because British kids like anyone else in the Western world were becoming obsessed with American rock and roll music in the late 50s and the early 60s in the pre-Beatles era, and yet was it maybe a little disingenuous, I guess maybe because of the Ronco But it was a little disingenuous to not include songs by, say, Lonnie Donegan.

There's no skiffle on the That'll Be The Day soundtrack.

So a few years ago, I watched It's Trad Dad, the Richard Lester film, and didn't realize at the time that 1920s Dixieland jazz was hugely popular amongst musicians.

I just knew I liked that song.

Lonnie Donegan, wasn't it? No, yes, I believe it was.

See, we're just reminiscing here.

I mentioned that song title in my song, Ahab the Arab.