Pye Nixa NJE 1014
Nixa Jazz Today Series
7” EP
Recorded 19/5/55

TRACKS

Side 1
Midnight Special (Trad. coll. Donegan)
When the Sun Goes Down

Side 2
New Burying Ground (Trad. coll. Donegan)
Worried Man Blues (Trad. coll. Donegan)

SLEEVE NOTES

Something About The Songs: by Lonnie Donegan

Midnight Special
This song is probably of white origin, but we have tried to give it a treatment more usually associated with Negro song gatherings. The Midnight Special was, in fact, the Golden Gate Ltd. out from Houston, and the prison through whose barred windows the headlights shone, the Texas State Prison near Huntsville.

When the Sun Goes Down
This is one of the loveliest of Mississippi folk blues. We learned this one from Big Bill Broonzy who. in turn, learned it from his friend the late Leroy Carr – the originator of the song in the form in which we sing it. We sang and played this one for quite a while before the tape started rolling so that when recording actually commenced, we were already in full swing.

New Burying Ground
This is an adaptation of a most unusual and macabre worksong from a transcription made by Alan Lomax for the Washington Library of Congress.

Worried Man Blues
Another song of white origin which tells a self-explanatory story in its full eight verses, but which unfortunately couldn’t be included in full in this shortened version. We have attempted the style of the Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston song groups, and Dick “Cisco” Bishop, who sings in typical unflustered Guthrie style, must surely be one of that fine American folksinger’s most ardent admirers on either side of the Atlantic.

PERSONNEL

Lonnie Donegan (guitar and vocal)
Dick “Cisco” Bishop (guitar and vocal)
Chris Barber (harmonica)
Jim Bray (bass)
Bob Watson (voice)
Pete Korrison (mandolin)

Sleeve:
Ian Bradbery (design)
Walter Hanlon (photography)

Recording:
Eric Tomlinson (balance)
Denis Preston (supervision)

MEDIA/MENTIONS

Lonnie Donegan had a huge influence on The Beatles. As George Harrison said: “Without Lead Belly, no Lonnie Donegan, without Lonnie Donegan, no Beatles.” The proto-Beatles The Quarrymen had all of the songs from this E.P. in their repertoire, apart from New Burying Ground, according to Jean-Louis Polard’s The Beatles: Get Back to their roots: Les racines musicales de John, Paul, George et Ringo. The Beatles resurrected Midnight Special during the Get Back/Let It Be sessions on Jan. 3, 1969 and Paul McCartney recorded his own version in 1987.

Off the Record
Liverpool Echo 29/10/55
On Pye’s Jazz Today label you’ll find Lonnie Donegan’s Skiffle Group in “Backstairs Session”. Great stuff this!

A Jazzman Votes “Aye!”
Sing Out! Vol. 7, No. 1 Spring 1957
The wide popularity enjoyed by skiffle in Britain today has points of interest, surprise, puzzlement and optimism…
Leadbelly is a strong influence as regards both material and style, but many singers do not use an artificial accent. The rhythmic quality of many of the groups is good, and I find them pleasant to listen to them generally. Numbers such as Railroad Bill, Ella Speed, Midnight Special, Rock Island Line, Raise a Ruckus are commonly used. Good performers are: Cyril Davies, Bob Watson, Ted Wood, Dick Bishop, Chris Barber, Mike Collins, among many others. The best recording I have heard is Lonnie Donegan’s “Backstairs Session” Pye-Nixa E.P. No. NJE 1014. This is one of Donegan’s earlier recordings; I don’t think he is anywhere near so good nowadays. Mention must also be made of Ken Colyer, who has a fine group.
Steve Lane, editor of Jazz Music
(See also ‘Don’t Scoff at Skiffle!‘ by John Hasted in the same issue. “The music is easier to perform than to listen to.”)

Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British Folk and Blues Revival
By Colin Harper, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006
Folk musician Andy Irvine on his musical upbringing: “I was brought up with a wind-up gramophone and a bunch of scratched 78s. I say behind the sofa, where th4e machine was, all my childhood and listen to these songs [from the 1930s] – they were great songs. I was vaguely brought up as an only child, kind of secretive. But, in retrospect, when I began to grow up, or pretend to grow up, I was kind of searching for music that I liked. Then rock ‘n’ roll came in about 1955 or ’56 and my friends of the time thought that was great – Bill Haley 78s – but I wasn’t into it. Then one day I heard Backstairs Session, which was an E.P. of Lonnie Donegan singing “Midnight Special”, with Dickie Bishop and Chris Barber on bass, and I thought that’s where it’s at.”

The Restless Generation: How Rock Music Changed the Face of 1950s Britain
By Pete Frame, Omnibus Press, 2011
Nobody knew it by Echoes of Harlem was the last Barber band album to feature Lonnie plunking his banjo. None of its tracks had been given over to the skiffle group because Denis Preston had been perspicacious enough to take them into IBC Studio in Portland Place to record their own extended player, Backstairs Session. Juxtaposing the relatively obscure New Burying Ground and When The Sun Goes Down with skiffle anthems Midnight Special and Worried Man Blues, it was a commercial enough package but was ignored or overlooked by most reviewers and radio programmers, and consequently by most record buyers.