Biography
Anthony James Donegan, 29 April 1931, Glasgow, Scotland, d. 4 November 2002, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England. Donegan, as ‘The King Of Skiffle’, became a more homogeneous UK equivalent to Elvis Presley than Tommy Steele. Donegan’ s mother was Irish and his father Scottish, and from the age of two he was raised in East Ham, London. Steeped in traditional jazz and its by-products, Donegan was a guitarist in a skiffle band before a spell in the army found him drumming in the Wolverines Jazz Band. After his discharge, he played banjo with Ken Colyer and then Chris Barber. With his very stage forename a tribute to the great black bluesman Lonnie Johnson, both units allowed him to sing a couple of blues-tinged American folk tunes as a ‘skiffle’ break. His version of Lead Belly’s ‘Rock Island Line’, issued from Barber’s New Orleans Joys in 1954 as a single after months in the domestic hit parade, was also a US Top 10 hit....
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