The man who had such a massive pop hit with My Old Man's A Dustman seems to have had a personality that stank. Negative, prickly, rude, difficult, mean, moany, suspicious and bitter are just a few of the words used by musicians and family members in an engrossing new biography to describe Lonnie Donegan. The list of musicians inspired by his work is prodigious and impressive. Van Morrison, George Harrison, Mark Knopfler, Paul McCartney, Bill Wyman, Brian May and Richard Thompson pay fulsome tribute in Lonnie Donegan and the Birth of British Rock & Roll, and Patrick Humphries's extensive and well-researched book is ultimately sympathetic to its subject.
But musicians who worked with Donegan tell of a dismally mean-spirited man. Jazz singer George Melly said that even before Donegan had his hits with Leadbelly's Rock Island Line, and Dustman, Donegan was "incredibly big-headed, conceited, arrogant and patronising".
Humphries, who has written musical biographies before of Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon, spoke to a lot of musicians and writers for the book and pieces together well the tale of how the working class lad from Glasgow became the world famous 'King Of Skiffle'.
He was born Anthony James Donegan in 1931 and his father was a good enough violinist to have played with the Scottish National Orchestra. The family moved to East Ham when Donegan was two and his father gave up music. The son's first break was playing jazz banjo with Ken Colyer's band, and early chapters evoke the atmosphere of 1950s London, with lost names such as Doug Dobell (and his record shop) and a world where actor Derek Guyler still played the washboard
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