Rock Island Line

.. is the title of a popular song from late 1955 which is both trivial in itself and gigantic in the change in music it presaged. This immense effect has been the subject of a big TV documentary. My personal involvement is that this was the first popular song with which I connected becoming in a small way a fan of the singer.

Rock Island Line is an American black folk tune heard by a folk tunes collector in the 30’s in an American prison then taken up and expanded with an opening monologue by the foremost black American folk singer, Leadbelly. It is about a fictionalised real railway line running south from Chicago to New Orleans. It crosses the Mississippi at Rock Island. After WW11 there was a traditional jazz revival in Britain which dragged Rock Island Line along almost by accident. Jazz bands had to have a break and it became habitual to fill the break with some other music. In the case of the Chris Barber jazz band the musician in the break was Lonnie Donegan playing a guitar and singing as part of a small group of bass and percussion.

This combination was christened skiffle and the huge popularity of RIL led to a shortlived ( couple of years ) fashion for skiffle music. This led to a huge interest in American blues songs and by extension rock’n’roll. Incidentally this was the black slang for sex.

Skiffle became wildly popular as a genre because it was simple and could use home made instruments. Along with the guitar a typical skiffle group would have a tea chest bass( made by upending a tea chest, passing a cord from the centre of the bottom up to a broomstick handle ) and a washboard percussion typically with thimbles on the fingers on the corrugated metal. This simple combination could produce amazing effects. This encouraged a generation to “have a go” and led on to groups such as the Beatles and Rolling Stones who started with skiffle,

I must make a small confession. I was friendly with Bob who had real musical talent ( playing guitar, clarinet and piano, not brilliantly but competently ) and he decided to form a garage skiffle group. I tried out on the tea chest bass and was swiftly rejected. Not surprising as I had no talent at all; my  music teacher at school had given up on me as a hopeless case pronouncing me tone deaf.

Back to RIL the song. The Lonnie Donegan version was essentially the Leadbelly one rather than the absolute original. The starting monologue describes a train driver approaching a toll gate with passage  free to animals.. “I got all livestock “ sings out the driver.  As the train passes through and picks up speed the driver shouts back .. “ I fooled you, I fooled you I got all pig iron “. The main song then with increasing tempo goes on with lines like.. “ if  you want to ride on the Rock Island Line get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line”. The tempo increases in line with the train picking up speed. So all rather banal but it struck a big chord with me because I was just becoming interested in teenage music and I was a big train fanatic.

You have to realise that until then popular music was aimed at adults and featured crooners, comedy songs and the occasional instrumental. These latter did include some traditional jazz from its big revival. Jazz was however regarded as rather edgy and foreign with the British bands slavishly following American examples.

Lonnie Donegan went on to produce an album. All the songs were based on American folk music and a large number featured trains and railroads( such as Wabash Cannonball and  the wreck of the old ’97)

Skiffle was a shortlived craze soon to be replaced by Elvis Presley, Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard. The rock’n’roll era was introduced to the UK by  Bill Haley with “Rock around the clock”. I had lost interest in this teenage music; I was not all impressed by Elvis Presley whom others raved about.. In fact my enthusiasm had shifted to the swing bands of the 30’s and 40’s with Tommy Dorsey,  Glenn Miller and the like. I owed this switch to Bob. He was a great jazz enthusiast, persuaded our music teacher to let him talk about the history of jazz. Although jazz was culminating then with the Modern Jazz Quartet the last time original jazz had been popular was with the swing bands. The jazz developments were swinging away from mainstream popularity. Traditional jazz was a revival of earlier New Orleans styles.

When the Beatles came along in 1963 I was a huge fan and through the sixties followed an interest in the multitude of similar groups such as Gerry and the Pacemakers and Billy. J Kramer and the Dakotas.

All this time I was also following an interest in more classical music attending various concerts mainly by the CBSO, Halle and Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras

Marriage is a three-ring circus- engagement ring, wedding ring and suffering.

I don’t know why jokes depict marriage as problematic, I think it’s great. I suppose it’s just a comic tradition like all mothers-in-law are supposed battleaxes.