Review: Billy Bragg Roots, Radicals and Rockers - How Skiffle Changed the World

Barney Doherty

tion of young people rejected the culture of their parents and instead forged their own. ‘Skiffle was the music for teenagers by teenagers’. In his comprehensive 400-page history of skiffle music, Bragg traces the origins of this revolutionary movement from its roots in American jazz and blues.

New Orleans Skiffle’s source lies in a British revival of traditional jazz at the start of the 1950s. Jazz bands in Britain were looking to Houston and New Orleans for its unique sound and repertoire. Jazz music was Billy Bragg Roots, Radicals and Rockers - How Skiffle living and exciting, it astonished young Changed the World, Faber 2017, £20.00 British people who had only the ‘bland’ music of their parents. Bragg explains that ‘before com- From the celebratory excitement of merce made ownership the key trans- Ska in the newly independent Jamaica, actional interest of creativity’, songs to the experimental Psychedelic rock of would be passed from performer to per- the American 1960s, music often reflects former through word of mouth. Meaning so much of the society from which it is through each transaction the songs would created. be moulded and ‘bore the fingerprints of Billy Bragg’s own musical work everyone who ever sang them’. brought the pro-union and anti- With no local equivalent to American Thatcherite politics of the 1980s to many, jazz, young fans in Britain, who could including myself. Who better then to only hear jazz and blues on rare records, write the history of a genre which rev- were forced to pick up instruments and olutionised British music and reflected try to understand the music through em- the changing society in 1950s post-war ulating it. Quickly a local trad jazz scene Britain. This new genre called ‘skif- developed through clubs as bands were es- fle’, played on guitars, washboards and tablished, each trying to match that pure broom-handle basses, was like nothing New Orleans sound. Suddenly music fans heard before in Britain and would have a could hear this exotic genre live and com- lasting effect. Even if it has, until now, pare styles and discuss its rich history. been largely forgotten by history. It is from this pool of musicians that Bragg tracks the development of skif- skiffle would emerge. Through the history fle music in the 1950s as a new genera- of the British revivalist jazz scene, Bragg

79 introduces the reader to key figures in the was that it represented a rebellion against soon to be skiffle genre. your parents and what they stood for. There was rock ‘n’ roll, but you couldn’t hear much of that... you could hear skiffle Birth of skiffle because it was being played in the street. The first skiffle tracks to be released It was anti-commercial. We’re going to on records appeared in early 1955, on play our music and sod all the rest. Skif- two records recorded by trad jazz bands flers were often heard to say that ‘I’ve within two weeks of each other. got more in common with a black cotton In both cases the fact that the skif- picker than I have with my dad.’ fle tracks were recorded was more acci- Many in the traditional jazz scene dental than planned. For ‘Ken Doyler’s from which skiffle was born, were irritated Jazzmen’ it was an attempt to salvage by what they perceived as the ‘dubious ef- something from a failed recording session, fect’ skiffle was having on the young jazz and in the case of the ‘Chris Barber Jazz fans. One trad jazz writer condemned Band’ it was simply a lack of ‘pure’ jazz the ‘utterly stupid antics of fans and fan- material. Both these bands were popu- nies who cavort and prance like inmates lar New Orleans style British Jazz bands of a mental home during music far beyond who helped spearhead the jazz revival. their comprehension.’ They were used to playing ‘breakdown Skiffle was vilified and resisted by sets’ during intervals of their jazz gigs. both the trad jazz scene and, of course, These breakdown sets consisted of a the BBC. The BBC was the ‘prime much smaller band and marked a ‘revolu- provider of popular culture in the UK’. tionary moment in British popular music, For the BBC directors, even jazz was con- when the guitar, for so long stuck at the sidered too vulgar and impolite, never back of the bandstand... comes to the mind skiffle. front and takes control.’ Guitars were the Despite the misgiving of both jazz star of these breakdown sets not the brass and mainstream British society, skiffle section, as they played the blues. emerged as a large underground sub- By May of 1955 the first stand alone culture. No doubt helped by the fact skiffle record was recorded by four mem- that around the same time working bers of the Chris Barber Jazz Band under class teenagers increased their ‘purchas- the new name the Lonnie Donegan Skiffle ing power’. More importantly though, Group. They played songs from Amer- skiffle was a ‘do it yourself’ music. It rose ican musicians like Lead Belly, Big Bill from the jazz culture of picking up an in- Broonzy and Woody Guthrie. The birth strument and learning it through practice of skiffle ‘was more a series of cock-ups but also relied on cheap and often home- and coincidences than anything else’. made instruments. Skiffle was not per- fected in music schools but in the hands of young working class people. Youth Revolt While commercially skiffle reached its Bragg writes that the audiences at the height in the mid-50s with the success first skiffle clubs were ‘mostly between of the band led by Lonnie Donegan, the ages of sixteen and twenty-four’. Ron Bragg contends that if you scrape the sur- Gould a washboard player in a skiffle face one would discover a booming grass- group claimed ‘the attraction of skiffle roots scene, as people experimented with

80 their homemade instruments. ‘It is es- the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks storm timated that there were between 30,000 both sides of the Atlantic in the 1960s. and 50,000 active skiffle bands at the The interesting development of new height of the craze in 1957.’ Included musical trends within society is a complex in this vast number was the Quarrymen and multifaceted phenomenon. How, for Skiffle Group, a Liverpudlian band con- instance, does an old 1930s New Orleans sisting of a sixteen-year-old John Lennon, song ‘Rock Island Line’ travel America fifteen- year old Paul McCartney and a and eventually cross the Atlantic to in- fourteen-year-old George Harrison. Mick fluence a generation of young people try- Jagger started playing skiffle with friends ing to ‘escape the drab world of post-war claiming ‘people tend to forget how enor- austerity’ Britain? The strongest point of mous that was. I was in loads of skiffle Bragg’s book is how he examines the in- groups.’ Van Morrison too played skiffle terplaying economic, social and cultural and admits that ‘without Donegan I don’t factors that pushed the development of know how I would have started.’ skiffle forward. War, generational divide, Eventually skiffle would be eclipsed multicultural neighbourhoods and many by Rock ‘n’ Roll, R&B and Folk music. other factors, all play a role in the cre- Bragg insists that although the style was ation of the skiffle genre and are captured short-lived it has a long-term legacy. Be- brilliantly in the book. fore the explosion of Rock ‘n’ Roll, skiffle offered a cheap alternative to teenagers This book is a great piece of history, in post-war Britain. Skiffle put guitars in which deals in depth with a working-class the hands of thousands of musicians and youth movement which in its attempt to acted as a ‘boot camp for the British In- forge a culture for themselves had a last- vasion’ that would see bands like Beatles, ing impact on pop culture today.

81