Lonnie Donegan, who has died aged 71, was the first British pop superstar, and the founding father of British pop music, the musician who provided the original inspiration for John Lennon, Paul McCartney and a host of others. By the time the Beatles shook up the music world in the mid-1960s, Donegan's glory days were over, and he had retreated into comedy and cabaret, but, between 1956 and 1962, he notched up an incredible 26 hits.
Donegan was a musical phenomenon. As the leader of the skiffle craze in the late 1950s, he inspired the formation of literally thousands of do-it-yourself bands across the country, and was directly responsible for the 1960s pop explosion that was to severely damage his own career.
Ironically, Rock Island Line, the song that transformed his life - and the history of British pop - was neither British nor contemporary. It had been written by the great black American folksinger Huddie Ledbetter, better known as "Leadbelly", and, like so much else of his work, had been rediscovered in 1933, when the American folklorists John and Alan Lomax stumbled on Leadbelly serving time for attempted murder in the Louisiana state penitentiary.
Donegan had begun playing the song in the early 1950s, during his days as banjoist with the Chris Barber Jazz Band, which specialised in New Orleans "trad" classics, but also included a splinter-group that bashed away at "skiffle" versions of American folk songs and blues during the intervals between the main band sets.
Along with John Henry, another railroad ballad from the days of slavery in the American south, Rock Island Line found its way on to the Barber band's 1954 album New Orleans Joys, though it was not until 18 months later that the two tracks were released, under Donegan's name, as a novelty single.
The reaction was extraordinary. Rock Island Line sold more than a million copies, and became one of the first British pop records to break into the American top-10 chart. It had a vitality, a rhythmic intensity and an earthy simplicity that - at the time - was simply unique in British pop.
Using a simple line-up of strummed guitar, double bass and drums, Donegan drawled, and then sang, his way through a story about a train driver on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific railroad fooling the inspector at a toll gate outside New Orleans. It was an extraordinarily exciting, brave and gutsy recording (as I remember from the shockwaves it caused among my school friends when we first heard it), and the wonder of it was that anyone with a cheap acoustic guitar, and the mastery of three basic chords, could attempt to imitate the Donegan style. British pop had arrived.
The man responsible was born Anthony James Donegan in Glasgow. His mother was Irish and his father Scottish, a violinist who, at one time, played with the Scottish Nat- ional Orchestra, and later joined the Merchant Navy. In 1933, the family moved to East Ham, London, and it was there, after the second world war, that the teenage Donegan became an enthusiastic fan of the new, trad jazz movement. He learned to play the guitar and the banjo, and formed the Anthony Donegan - later Tony Donegan - Jazz Band, which he financed through part-time delivery work for a photographer. As an amateur, he practised and performed alongside other fans of New Orleans jazz, including the trombonist Barber, the trumpeter Ken Colyer and the clarinet-player Monty Sunshine, and he kept in touch with them all after he was called up for national service in 1949. In the army, he joined yet another band, the Wolverines, this time as a drummer.
After his military discharge, Donegan changed his stage name again, this time to Lonnie, after his idol, the American blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson, with whom he had once played. He then joined his old friends Colyer, Barber and Sunshine as banjo-player in the Ken Colyer Jazzmen, and it was here that the skiffle movement was, born.
Jazz clubs in the early 1950s were often unlicensed, and the musicians would take regular breaks so their audiences could nip out for a drink in the nearest pub. Some entertainment had to be provided for those patrons who remained behind, so Colyer and his band began to play and sing American folk blues songs. They took the term "skiffle" from a favourite record, Home Town Skiffle, a compilation of American jug band styles and western swing.
Before long, however, the Jazzmen split up because of Colyer's insistence that they should play in what he regarded as the correct traditional style, and the entire band, including Donegan, left to regroup themselves as the Chris Barber Jazz Band, which gave its first performance at the 100 Club, London, on May 31 1954. When they recorded the New Orleans Joys album, Barber insisted that the record should include a full representation of the group's work - including skiffle songs, with Donegan singing them.
Initially, executives at their record label, Decca, were unimpressed; they chose a whole series of instrumental tracks from the album as singles before they reluctantly released Rock Island Line.
With its astonishing success, Donegan became a major star, and soon quit the Barber band for a solo career, and a contract with Pye Records. He moved away from blues and jazz to concentrate exclusively on skiffle, transforming dozens of American folk songs by adding in a hefty beat (hefty, at least, by mid-1950s standards) and his distinctive nasal twang. For six years, everything he recorded became a hit, and, as songs like Lost John, Bring A Little Water Sylvie, Cumberland Gap and Grand Coolie Dam followed each other into the bestseller charts, do-it-yourself skiffle bands sprang up across the country attempting to imitate his style.
By the late 1950s, however, it was becoming clear that Donegan was not just interested in popularising the songs of black Americans like Leadbelly, or white Americans like Woody Guthrie. He was evolving into an all-round entertainer and comedian, in the tradition of British music-hall, as he showed in 1957 with his comic song, Putting On The Style, and his first excursion into pantomime.
The following year, he appeared at a royal variety performance, and, in 1959, recorded his million-selling Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight, a new version of a Boy Scout favourite he had sung as a child. It reached number three in the British charts, and number five in the United States. In 1960, Donegan sold more than a million records in Britain alone, with another novelty song, My Old Man's A Dustman, a rewrite of a Liverpool folk tune and first world war marching song, updated with cockney jokes and lyrics. It was top of the charts for four weeks.
By this time, Donegan had carved out an impressive niche for himself within the pop music world, but the move towards comedy and cabaret also saw the beginnings of his commercial downfall. The British music scene was changing rapidly, as those he had inspired to pick up a guitar looked for something new to follow the limitations of skiffle.
Some went on to explore, in greater depth, the works of Leadbelly or Woody Guthrie, and joined the new folk music movement. Others followed the route of Alexis Korner - once, like Donegan, a skiffle player with Ken Colyer - and became immersed in the new British blues scene, which was to inspire bands like the Rolling Stones.
Donegan had cut himself off from all that, as he was to learn at the end of 1962. He notched up his last big seller, Pick A Bale Of Cotton, in August that year, but, in December, when he released a comic follow-up, The Market Song, recorded with Max Miller, he found his string of hits had suddenly ended. Members of a former skiffle group, called the Quarrymen, had changed their name and style, and made their first chart entry with Love Me Do. Donegan was not amused. "The Beatles' first records were old-fashioned, archaic rock 'n' roll," he told me, "and I was resentful at the way they stopped my cash flow."
Donegan's glory days may have been over, but he kept on going. He had set up his own music publishing company in the 1950s, and, a decade later, his publishing interests had become extensive. He also kept performing, playing the cabaret circuit in America, Australia and Britain. When I met him in 1974, after watching him give a cabaret show at the Penthouse Club, on Park Lane, he was complaining at what had happened to the music scene, and its new heroes, the "long-haired, pot-smoking pop musicians".
Four years later, after his career had suffered a second blow, those musicians attempted to give him a hand up. In 1976, he had moved to the American resort of Lake Tahoe, where he suffered a heart attack and underwent open-heart surgery. He also stopped performing. That might have been the end of his career, if those he had once inspired to play guitar had not come to his rescue.
So it was that, in 1978, Adam Faith persuaded a gang of rock world celebrities to get together with Donegan and re-record his old hits. Ringo Starr, Elton John, Ronnie Wood, Rory Gallagher and Brian May were among the extraordinary cast who joined him for his comeback album, Puttin' On The Style, which was launched in grand style with a party in the south of France.
It was - predictably - something of a mess, but it sold reasonably well, and Lonnie was persuaded to go back on the road. A later album, Sundown, recorded in 1980 with Doug Kershaw, attempted to mix skiffle with country, though, by this time, public interest had faded once again.
For the last two decades, Donegan survived on past glories, spending most of his time at his house in Malaga, Spain. In 1990, he became a father for the seventh time, when his third wife, Sharon, gave birth to a son. He was still plagued by heart problems, and had further bypass surgery in 1992. Musically, he seemed unsure of which direction to take, as he swapped between cabaret and skiffle revival shows. He even got back together with the Chris Barber Band for reunion concert tours. And it was on tour, in Peterborough, that he died.
Lonnie Donegan may have been the godfather of British pop, but, at heart, he was an updated music-hall performer, adrift in the wrong era. When I met him, he described himself like this: "I'm not a serious musician, because I don't have the capability, but I take my music seriously because I love music. And I'm a man who loves a laugh. So if there's no laugh, what's the point of getting up there?"
He received an Ivor Novello lifetime achievement award in 1997, and was made an MBE in 2000. Even towards the end, he retained the respect of many in the music business. Eric Clapton had recently invited him to take part in the forthcoming Albert Hall tribute concert to George Harrison, himself once a Donegan fan. He also wrote the Tom Jones hit, I'm Never Gonna Fall In Love Again.
Donegan is survived by Sharon and their sons, Peter, David and Andrew; by Fiona and Corrina, the children of his first marriage; and by Anthony and Juanita, the children of his second marriage.
· Anthony James 'Lonnie' Donegan, musician and entertainer, born April 29 1931; died November 4 2002