Lonnie Donegan

Anthony James "Lonnie" Donegan (29 April 1931 – 3 November 2002) was a British skiffle singer, songwriter and musician, referred to as the "King of Skiffle", who influenced 1960s British pop and rock musicians. Born in Scotland and brought up in England, Donegan began his career in the British trad jazz revival, but transitioned to skiffle in the mid-1950s, rising to prominence with a hit recording of the American folk song "Rock Island Line", which helped spur the broader UK skiffle movement.

Donegan had 31 UK top-30 hit singles, 24 were successive hits and three were number one. He was the first British male singer with two US top-10 hits. Donegan received an Ivor Novello lifetime achievement award in 1995, and in 2000, he was appointed MBE. He was a pivotal figure in the British Invasion due to his influence in the US in the late 1950s.

Donegan was born in Bridgeton, Glasgow, Scotland, on 29 April 1931. He was the son of an Irish mother (Mary Josephine Deighan) and a Scots father (Peter John Donegan), a professional violinist who had played with the Scottish National Orchestra. In 1933, when Donegan was aged two, the family moved to East Ham in Essex. Donegan was evacuated to Cheshire to escape the Blitz in the Second World War and attended St Ambrose College in Hale Barns. He lived for a while on Chiswick Mall in Middlesex.

As a child growing up in the early 1940s, Donegan listened mostly to swing jazz and vocal acts, and became interested in the guitar. Country and western and blues records, particularly by Frank Crumit and Josh White, attracted his interest, and he bought his first guitar at 14 in 1945. He learned songs such as "Frankie and Johnny", "Puttin' On the Style", and "The House of the Rising Sun" by listening to BBC radio broadcasts. By the end of the 1940s, he was playing guitar around London and visiting small jazz clubs.

Donegan first played in a major band after Chris Barber heard that he was a good banjo player, and, on a train, asked him to audition. Donegan had never played the banjo, but he bought one for the audition and succeeded more on personality than talent. His stint with Barber's trad jazz band was interrupted when he was called up for national service in 1949, but while in the army at Southampton, he was the drummer in Ken Grinyer's Wolverines Jazz Band at a local pub. A posting to Vienna brought him into contact with American troops, and access to US records and the American Forces Network radio station.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.