In the summer of 1954 the popular music world was continuing in its usual easy listening way. Doris Day and Perry Como were riding high in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. But, within a two-week period in July two events happened, one in Memphis, the other in London, that lit a fuse which a year later would blow that cosy music world sky high.
On the 5th July a certain unknown singer called Elvis Presley was larking about in Sam Phillips’ Sun recording studio in Memphis, jokily singing a Blues song, when Phillips recognised something he’d been looking for for years, a white guy who could sing black music without losing its sexual energy. Elvis was on his way. Within a matter of weeks, on the 13th July, the Chris Barber Jazz Band was recording an album in London when they realised they were short of material. Their banjo player, Lonnie Donegan, suggested they did some of the skiffle material they sometimes played. One of these songs was Rock Island Line. In 1955 it became the first British debut single to attain gold status and, as a result, skiffle spread throughout the UK. Skiffle was roots music played on cheap basic, sometimes home-made, instruments.
The two events were unconnected but had a combined effect. Young people in the UK saw Elvis as a far-off, unattainable dream. Skiffle gave them a means of at least striving for it. John Lennon in 1950s Liverpool, at the moment he heard Heartbreak Hotel, wanted to be Elvis. Now, with skiffle, he could do something about it. What he did was form the Quarrymen and use his skiffle band to play rock’nroll. And he wasnt the only one. Hundreds, probably thousands, of British teenagers did the same. At exactly the same time as Lennon formed his group I watched my two uncles, only five years older than me, rehearsing in Leeds with cheap acoustic guitars, tea-chest bass and washboard. They progressed to drums and electric guitars, as did Lennon and McCartney, in order to play Chuck Berry and Shadows music. They didn’t make the big time but they enjoyed the ride.
There was an ironic outcome to all this. Skiffle was always small fry compared to Elvis. It was rough, cheap and amateurish. But out of it came the 1960s British music invasion of the US, led by the Beatles, which swept all before it, including Elvis.
I saw it happen, without at first realising what was happening. I went from skiffle to rock’nroll to the Beatles. And I never shed a tear for Doris Day or Perry Como.