Monday, December 13, 2010

We need a Skiffle Revival and it should start right away. Sign up.

I don't know what prompted it, who knows what prompts these things, but I've just been browsing Youtube's collection of Lonnie Donegan clips. I think it's high time we had a Skiffle revival in this country, I really do. Check out some of the 40+ years of Donegan's taped oeuvre, and even in his last years, he was quite clearly having a complete blast. And not just in the cliched "Chewing Gum" clips, but in his handling of Lead Belly stuff like Rock Island Line, and Midnight Special, into the gospel "I Shall Not Be Moved" (which is a terrific song, as proven not only by Dongean's rockout take on it, but others from Mississippi John Hurt to Greg Brown).

Some time ago in this symposium I rambled on about the morphology of the many incarnations of "The Ship That Never Returned" through The Wreck of Old 97 up to "MTA", and in that vein I point fans of either Woody Guthrie's Grand Coulee Dam or Roy Acuff's Wabash Cannonball to this clip, which is terrific.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jc2efqj5Js&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=MLGxdCwVVULXfiPeMzM9ZSvoaYOzHFO369

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