Skiffle Music Quotes

Early on I was more interested in gypsy jazz music until rock and roll came around and I listened to a lot of Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and skiffle singer Lonnie Donegan.

My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.

Folk music is where I come from originally. The very first thing that introduced me to playing guitars at all was skiffle - my cousin had been in London the summer that skiffle was big.

Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat.

There was this big skiffle craze happening for a while in England.... Everybody was in a skiffle group..All you needed was an acoustic Guitar, a washboard with thimbles for percussion, and a tea-chest- you know, the ones they used to ship tea from India- and you just put a broom handle on it and a bit of string, and you had a bass..you only needed two chords; Jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing. And I think that's basically where i've always been at. I'm just a skiffler, you know. Now I do posh skiffle, that's all it is.

As a developing musician, skiffle became a platform for me to start playing music.

Lonnie Donegan and the folk movement were responsible for a lot of the spread of the blues in England. The group Them with Van Morrison was a big influence on me, too, as were The Stones; The Yardbirds, John Mayall, and the other British blues pioneers.

As soon as I heard skiffle, I loved it and I knew that I wanted to play it.

Even today, skiffle is a defining part of my music. If I get the opportunity to just have a jam, skiffle is what I love to play.

My parents liked to go dancing, and they encouraged all of us to bring our friends home. My brother had a skiffle group, and there would often be dancing in the house. And my parents would come and dance with us.

You'll find so many of the guitarists from the '60s will all say Lonnie Donegan was the influence.

Skiffle was blues featuring a washboard and acoustic instruments. It encompassed blues, with elements of folk, jazz, and, at times, American country-and-western music.