Mandolins and Skiffle?

[kmiller1610]

So I'm watching "Walk the Line" the other night and thinking that that early Johnny Cash music sure sounded like "Skiffle" which I was only really aware of because McCartney talks about it in the first DVD from "Beatles Anthology."

Now the Wiki entry mentions that Skiffle has roots that go back quite a ways, but that it also was a craze in England that occurred right around the time that Cash was getting started and only a few years after Bill Monroe was birthing bluegrass.

So is anyone aware of any examples of Skiffle Music played on Mandolin?

[journeybear]

Nope. But that doesn't mean it hasn't been done, nor shouldn't be done, nor couldn't be done. If you're interested , and can find a few similar-monded people, start a skiffle group. These days, heaven knows, anything goes! :mandosmiley:

I think your timeline is a little off. The British skiffle craze was very brief, mid-to-late 1950s, which does indeed coincide with Johnny Cash's early career, when his signature sound was developed (as the story goes, accidentally, as so many wonderful inventions have been), which does indeed resemble the classic skiffle sound. Bill Monroe was developing his style during the 1930s, and found his distinctive signature sound with the addition of Earl Scruggs in 1945, ten years before skiffle. That's a big gap in the context of modern popular music.

It's pretty common for people to claim a correllation between jug band music and skiffle, mostly because of the choice of rhythm instruments, but I have to wonder. I've never heard of any British jug bands, nor American skiffle groups. Not sure why the wiki entry for skiffle has a photo of Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, one of the best known early jug bands, instead of one of Lonnie Donegan or some other well-known skiffler; I'll be correcting that soon. ;) I should point out I've contributed substantially to the jug band entry, which used to be a real hodgepodge. Perhaps skiffle is next ... :whistling:

Mandolins were used pretty often in jug bands, though not considered an essential element. Poverty was, though, so if you were forming a band and someone had a mandolin, he'd be most welcome. The original jug band era was during the Great Depression, and the instrumentation arose out of necessity. Not sure how skiffle got started, but it took off quickly, and died just as quickly with the rise of rock and roll. There may have been something in its rhythm sound that appealed to Johnny Cash, as the similarity seems obvious. Keep in mind, though, that skiffle groups were mostly acoustic, while Johnny Cash's band was electric, and his guitar player, Luther Perkins, deserves credit for that distinctive sound.

Hope this helps. If I turn up anything while researching skiffle I'll post it here. ~o)

[kmiller1610]

Great reply. Thanks so much. My brother was in a jug band while in high school (late 1960s) , but it wasn't commercial, just kind of odd, considering it was a private boy's school....

[journeybear]

Jug band music is kind of odd, period. :)) It is a lot of fun to play, and can be made to sound very authentic (as opposed to being a novelty act) pretty easily. I didn't set out to be in one, but I love playing the blues, and when this band was being formed, I was invited to join, and it ended up being the longest-lasting and most successful band in my, ahem, brilliant career. I just wish I'd gotten kicked out after the first recording, not before ... :(

My friends in the Philadelphia Jug Band went to the first Philadelphia Folk Festival, saw the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, and immediately formed a band, which has continued to this day, nearly fifty years later. After jamming and camping with them for years at the festival, they finally made good on a long-standing threat and recorded an album (at the same studio in Woodstock used by John Sebastian and Yank Rachel, among many others) and enlisted me for instrumental purposes. I've got some cuts from this at my myspace page. (http://www.myspace.com/mandolinsteve9) :mandosmiley:

I'll be researching skiffle during the next few days, and if I find any mandolins involved, you'll see it here first.

[Ivan Kelsall]

Going back into the early '60's,in the UK,one of ther top acts was the 'Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group'.The music sounded so simple it attracted hundreds of 'would-be' Skifflers to pick up Guitar & try to play - including John Lennon & Paul McCartney.
At the time,there was an American Musician living over here - Johnnie Duncan,who had a band called the "Bluegrass Boys"(literally!). Now i've been told that Johnnie Duncan was a decent Mandolin player,he was certainly very fond of Bluegrass,although he didn't play much of it publicly,nobody would have known what the dickens it was over here in the UK. He played a sort of 'Countryfie'd' Skiffle. Eventually he got himself a good Banjo player,Pete Sayers,who eventually left to live in the USA. That left JD without a Banjo picker,a role which i took up for a week when he played a series of working men's club gigs. I earned more money that week,that i earned in a month at work. This is a YouTube clip of Lonnie Donegan singing a song which we Brits.do NOT wish to be reminded of too many times,thank you very much ! :grin: ( Ya,win some,Ya loose some !!!),
His 'Skiffle'group had got a bit more sophisticated by this time.The Tea box bass & washing board rhythm section had been replaced by electric Guitars,
Ivan ~:>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTKSWnWIxnM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-DhSxay0HY

The other is of Johnnie Duncan singing a Bill Monroe classic "Footprints in the Snow" - it's about the only one i can remember hearing him sing & one i played with him years back. BTW - 'this' Johnnie Duncan mustn't be confused with the Country singer from Texas of the same name,who passed away in 2006.

[journeybear]

While researching skiffle I learned that Lonnie Donegan also played banjo - didn't know that before - and that he died in 2002, a year after celebrating 50 years in show business. Although here I knew him from "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?" it was really "Rock Island Line" that catapulted him to fame, a monster hit in the UK, and surely the impetus for the skiffle craze. I didn't hear his version till much later. I see also that he was honored with an MBE.

As far as I can tell the main similarity between skiffle and jug band music resides in the rhythm section - washboard instead of drums, tea chest or washtub and pole for bass (jug bands could have the bass provided by either jug or washtub). Also, skiffle sounds like it was derived from folk, while jug band was derived from blues and ragtime. Though, to be sure, there are exceptions, notably the aforementioned "Rock Island Line," arranged from a prison work song and recorded first by Leadbelly.

[Michael Eck]

Visit www.jugstompers.com and scroll down. You'll find a picture of us just after singing "Midnight Special" with The Quarrymen (yes, the band that birthed The Beatles). I've just laid my mandolin down, but there's yr skiffle/mando connection!

[journeybear]

Better late than never, I suppose! ;) Too bad it wasn't a complete Quarrymen reunion, but there's only so much that can be done ... :whistling:

Still, sounds like a very cool time was had by all! :cool:

BTW, at least one former member of The Quarrymen has ventured into the mandolin zone. As has been previously noted elsewhere, George Harrison played mandolin on the title song of his "Gone Troppo" (http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?p=652471) album. :mandosmiley:

[Santiago]

Here's a young Jimmy Page playing skiffle on UK television... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUyHpoWnT4) :mandosmiley:

[Ivan Kelsall]

JB - Lonnie Donegan did play Banjo,but he played a 5-string with the 5th string removed & it was tuned to guitar. He really was a VERY influential musician at the time,a fact which seems to have been overlooked until relatively recently. He was never really given the credit during his lifetime for starting a 'Guitar playing' craze in the UK'
Turning to US bands,i just adore the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. One of my favourite tracks is 'Beedle Um Bum'. I used to do a lot of hiking (& rock climbing when i was young & stupid).I was out one day with a few fellow hikers & was listening to my little transistor radio, when they played that song - i nearly dropped !. It was terrific. I must admit,& i'm ashamed to say,that i don't have one recording of the JKJB - they share that fate with lots of other bands that i like. There's a 'Greatest Hits' CD available, i must try to track it down - 'County Sales' or 'CD Baby' don't have it,but it's bound to be available somewhere - found it,Amazon Ivan:cool:

[journeybear]

... He was never really given the credit during his lifetime for starting a 'Guitar playing' craze in the UK' ...

Really? I'm surprised to hear that. I though he made a big splash and suddenly everybody wanted to be like him and skiffle bands sprang up everywhere. Of course, I only read about that. Skiffle didn't get much play in the US, a far as I know. As I mentioned, I dd hear "Chewing Gum," but just as a novelty item. Didn't understand it was part of something bigger till ater.

As to "Beedle Um Bum" - I'll go put our version up at my myspace page (http://www.myspace.com/mandolinsteve9). It's about time I changed things around there a bit anyway. Not exactly Kweskin, but the PJB do a fair job of staying true to the original inspiration (Kweskin), complete with that wacky key change. I used to do this in my old jug band in CT too, and someone in the band found a second verse to it. Which I don't remember. Lastly, while camping with the PJB at the Philly Folk Festival, and holding forth for our big Saturday night jamboree, for years a fine floozy with a two-string washtub bass and her fine floozy friends would come by and jam for an hour or so. And flirt - she liked to tipple and dress floozily and carry on, quite the character, and this was part of her and her friends' Saturday night fun. Of course we would always do "Beedle Um Bum" in her honor. For those who don't know, the song starts with, "Down in Memphis Tennessee, there lives a girl named Cindy ..."

And Santiago - that video with Jimmy Page is something else! How old do you reckon he is there - 13? :)) Also, for what it's worth, the second song, "Cotton Fields," is another Leadbelly song!

[Tosh Marshall]

Johnny Duncan & The Bluegrass Boys doing Footprints In The Snow can be found on 'As Good As It Gets: Skiffle Vol. 2', two great Skiffle collections from Disky http://www.amazon.co.uk/As-Good-Gets-Skiffle-Vol/dp/B00005IA78/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1246690065&sr=1-2
I'd also recommend reading Chas McDevitt's book on Skiffle if you can find it, a cracking read: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Skiffle-Roots-Rock-Chas-McDevitt/dp/1861051409/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246689991&sr=8-9

[Tosh Marshall]

Apologies, it's Vol 1 http://www.amazon.co.uk/As-Good-as-Gets-Skiffle/dp/B00004SD35/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1246693376&sr=1-13 that Footprints In The Snow is on, but even better Track 2 is Johnny Duncan & The Bluegrass Boys doing Get Along Home Cindy and he definitely plays mandolin on that (I just played it) , great Skiffle compilations.

[Tosh Marshall]

In addition to the above, Johnny Duncan played mandolin on four tracks with the Chris Barber Skiffle Group - 'Can't You Line 'Em', 'Where Could I Go', 'Doin' My Time' & 'Gypsy Davy' all of which are on the As Good As It Gets compilations. Also the Avon Cities Skiffle Group with Ray Bush featured Michael Hitchings on mandolin, a couple of their tracks are also featured on the compilations. And Chas McDevitt also played mandolin.

[Ivan Kelsall]

JB - You're perfectly correct,but the fact wasn't realised until many years later. Thanks Tosh. I knew that JD had a Mandolin,but i played with him quite a few times during the 'Folk' boom era & i also saw him play with several different musicians including Karl Denver of "Wimowhe" fame,but he never played Mandolin in anything i saw him do. I also forgot to mention the Chris Barber Skiffle Group as well - i think Lonnie Donegan played Banjo with them didn' he ?.
'Charles McDevitt & Nancy Whiskey' - they had a huge hit in the UK with the Elizabeth Cotton song "Freight Train". Not to forget the 'Vipers' Skiffle group either,one member of which was Wally Whyton who,many years later had his own big hit over here in the UK with his version of "Gentle on my mind". I played Banjo on that song on stage with him at the MSG (Manchester Sports Guild) when he came up North, (I'm 'name dropping' like crazy in this thread ain't i ?). The 'Vipers' released their own version of 'Cumberland Gap' at the same time as Lonnie Donegan,but it was the LD version that became a 'hit'.
I think that the very first Mandolin i ever saw,was on BBC Television & played by Robin Hall of the Robin Hall & Jimmy McGregor Scottish folk duo. I didn't know what the instrument was when i first saw it,but i certainly liked the shape of it - still do as a matter of fact !.
The skiffle craze 'pre-empted' the coming boom in Folk music. There was obviously a lot of influence from America,but no one could have suspected what was to come when thing really did take off. New names began popping out of the woodwork so to speak., & then WHAM !!! - the Folk boom was on us. I think that era,because it also saw the rise of the 'Merseybeat' sound,was the most exciting time in not only UK music,but in 'world' music & saw the appearance of all the great names that we remember so well today -ain't nostalgia wonderful !!,
Ivan :popcorn:

[kmiller1610]

You guys are seriously great. This place should be enshrined as a national research treasure.

[journeybear]

Hey - whe we're good, we'revery very good. The rest of thetime, we're just yakkin' it up to beat the band! :))

But seriously, you guys have given me a lot to work with, and I'll be getting to the skiffle page at wiki this week. Truthfully, I'm a little surprised there were mandolins in skiffle at all, but I'm not surprised they were used so rarely. It does stand to reason, though, that with so many skiffle bands - tens of thousands - some would have mandolins. This is one other characteristic they had in common with jug bands - necessity being the mother of invention, especially when driven by limited resources, if one wanted to play in a band and had access to any instruments that could fit, more or less, you'd be included. Mandolin isn't what one typically thinks of concerning jug band instrumentation either, yet they did show up often. After all, since the jug bands sprang up during the Great Depression, not long after the mandolin craze had waned, there surely were a plenty of them lying around, to be used however. Howard Armstrong and Yank Rachell are just the best remembered of these players, there were more. :mandosmiley:

[Ivan Kelsall]

kmiller1610 - we's great ain't we !!??. :grin:Seriously,those of us who were around during that period,possibly experienced the greatest upheaval in 'popular' music of all time. We had Skiffle,that pre-empted the Folk boom era.,we still had all the popular 'crooners & balladeers' doing their stuff on both sides of the Atlantic. - mostly the English artistes were doing 'cover versions' of the US hits,but not all. We had the tag end of the 'proper' Rock 'n Roll era, & then came along the Beatles & the Merseybeat sound. At one period,all these styles were running mates.The UK 'pop charts' were a mishmash of music styles - totally incredible & awesome at the same time. I feel very lucky to have been around at the time,when so much was new and/or being 'newly discovered'. I don't think that there's been a musical 'era' like it since. We've had the rise & fall of 'supergroups' & individual 'superstars' of one sort or another since then,but nothing like we had back in the late '60's & 70's,
Ivan ~:>

[journeybear]

Over here we also had the teen idols (Frankie Avalon, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Vee, Connie Francis, Annette Funicello, etc etc) who were trotted out by the record companies and promoted mercilessly in an effort to cash in on what Elvis had done and the gap left when he joined the Army. It seemed an attempt by the major labels to return to the days of "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?" and such. That's what inspired "Bye Bye Birdie," and that was the vast vacuum of vapidity that The Beatles smashed when they arrived. There also was doo wop, which was more of a populist movement. And a couple of years after The Beatles hit there was the psychedelic era, when the inmates were running the asylum, and record companies were signing anyone with a funny name, because they had no idea who was going to hit it big but didn't want to be left behind. In the process a lot of music got recorded that probably wouldn't have been otherwise (a lot of forgettable stuff, too, but that's always the case) - that is, Strawberry Alarm Clock - yes; Chocolate Wrist Band - not so much. ;)

But yes - you look at the charts from that time, and they're all over the map, stylistically. And when you listened to the radio, there were all kinds of genres mixed up together. It was indeed a glorious time, and listeners were exposed to musical styles they may well never have have encountered on their own. The rise of FM radio in the 70s kept that alive, as an art form in itself. Tightly formatted and demographically targeted programming put an end to all this in the late 70s to early 80s, which led to what we have now - radio on demand. It sounds like a good idea - listen to what you want, whenever you want - but it seems rather sterile and isolated. If Aretha were to be just starting out now, she would never show up on the ipods of most Americans, and that's a shame. One will never hear something new unless one has one's ears open - and someone's music has a means of reaching them. Barriers are meant to be broken, and in retrospect this breaching seems obvious, and the barriers ludicrous. But it took someone as immensely successful as Michael Jackson to break the race barrier on MTV in the mid-80s, and someone with the pluck of Sarah McLachlan to smash the gender barrier with Lilith Fair in the late 90s. We look back at these changes now and the logic seems undeniable, but at the time it took some doing to get the establishment to loosen their reins.

All right, I'm stepping down off the soapbox for now. Next! :))

[Ivan Kelsall]

Quote (again) :- "..... vast vacuum of vapidity " Oh ! - such vocabulistic lyricism !!!! - Nicely put JB. It seems from what you say, that the music charts were in a similar state in the US at the time,that the UK charts were in - 'all over the map'. What were the 'Hit Parade' music charts based on in the US ?. In the UK they were originally based on the 'sales of sheet music' - unimagineable today.Record sales charts didn't begin until 14th Nov.1952 in the UK,& were first published bythe music paper 'New Musical Express'. Have a look at this site to see what was going on over here during the 50's onward.
www.backdate.co.uk There's some interesting stuff.
You're right again JB,in what you say re.the 'undeniable logic' of the changes taking place. Looking back,it seems as thought there was an unpbroken transition from one style to another,but there were several periods of hiatus,were 'nothing' seemed to be happening.Once such period in the UK was filled by the arival & arise of 'Punk Rock'. There was nothing else of interest & the Punk Rockers ( & the record companies) 'seized the moment'.
Currently,for my money,the UK music scene is in a poor state.There are well established bands here,but nothing that appeals 'across the board' to all age groups.Too many one hit wonders still putting out records & Cd's pertaining to be the 'Greatest Hits' of singers no one's ever heard of. Mainly the record companies are to blame (IMHO),they put stuff out,hoping to create 'the next big thing' on the music scene & in reality they're just creating 'musical dross' which is quickly forgotten. No wonder the music of the late 50's thro.the 60's & 70's is so nostalgic to us - at least the music for most part had a 'melody',something sadly lacking in much of the stuff around today - & i simply LOVE 'Doo-wop". I have a 2 CD set of the best of the Doo-wop bands - some of my favourite song on those. All (i'm pretty sure) of the bands were coloured artistes & in my opinion some of them were the very best bands around at the time,
Ivan:grin: