CUMBERLAND GAP
LONNIE DONEGAN
LONNIE DONEGAN
Written by: Traditional
Recorded by: Lonnie Donegan (1957)
Recorded by: Lonnie Donegan (1957)
CUMBERLAND GAP WAS INCLUDED in
American Ballads and Folk Songs,
a 1934 collection by John Lomax.
Woody Guthrie recorded it in the mid-1940s,
and it came to greater prominence during the
American folk music revival in the 1950s. In 1957
British skiffle star Lonnie Donegan who was
looking for traditional American songs to follow
his hits with ‘Rock Island Line’ and ‘Don’t You
Rock Me Daddy-O’, made ‘Cumberland Gap’
his next single. It became his first UK number
one and was promptly added to the repertoires of
countless British amateur skiffle groups including
one called The Rebels (the same name as Duane
Eddy’s backing group) formed by schoolboy
George Harrison, his brother Peter and a friend
called Arthur Kelly. These Rebels only ever played
one real gig but they included ‘Cumberland
Gap’ in their set. It is hard to overestimate the
importance of skiffle to that generation of British
music fans, and Donegan really was the star of
the genre, a home-grown hero who might not
be Elvis Presley but certainly sounded a lot more
exciting than Perry Como (on whose famous
US TV show he actually appeared following his
ground-breaking American chart success with
‘Rock Island Line’). The Quarrymen skiffle group,
which would soon welcome Paul McCartney,
already performed ten Donegan numbers and
American Ballads and Folk Songs,
a 1934 collection by John Lomax.
Woody Guthrie recorded it in the mid-1940s,
and it came to greater prominence during the
American folk music revival in the 1950s. In 1957
British skiffle star Lonnie Donegan who was
looking for traditional American songs to follow
his hits with ‘Rock Island Line’ and ‘Don’t You
Rock Me Daddy-O’, made ‘Cumberland Gap’
his next single. It became his first UK number
one and was promptly added to the repertoires of
countless British amateur skiffle groups including
one called The Rebels (the same name as Duane
Eddy’s backing group) formed by schoolboy
George Harrison, his brother Peter and a friend
called Arthur Kelly. These Rebels only ever played
one real gig but they included ‘Cumberland
Gap’ in their set. It is hard to overestimate the
importance of skiffle to that generation of British
music fans, and Donegan really was the star of
the genre, a home-grown hero who might not
be Elvis Presley but certainly sounded a lot more
exciting than Perry Como (on whose famous
US TV show he actually appeared following his
ground-breaking American chart success with
‘Rock Island Line’). The Quarrymen skiffle group,
which would soon welcome Paul McCartney,
already performed ten Donegan numbers and
‘Cumberland Gap’ was the paradigm Donegan
skiffle record: a repetitive, two-chord song that
depended for its effect upon galloping pace, an
ever-more frantic delivery and the odd all-purpose
ribald couplet arbitrarily mixed in (sample: ‘Two
old ladies sitting in the sand/Each one wishing
that the other was a man’). ‘Cumberland Gap’
also features an uncharacteristically haphazard
electric guitar solo from the normally dependable
session man Denny Wright that was definitely
not for the skiffle purists. None of this seemed to
matter: ‘Cumberland Gap’ was Donegan’s biggest
hit to date. Even so Anthony James Donegan
(like Chas McDevitt and Nancy Whiskey, a
Glaswegian) came from a jazz background – he
only assumed the ‘Lonnie’ handle to match his
skiffle persona – but soon seemed to be heading
for the realm of novelty songs. Recording comic
music hall numbers like ‘Does Your Chewing Gum
Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight’
and ‘My Old Man’s A Dustman’ suggested that
Donegan saw skiffle coming to an end quite
soon. It did and in one of life’s little ironies it
was effectively The Beatles who killed off his
career. Lennon met McCartney the same year
Donegan was riding high with ‘Cumberland
Gap’ and soon the British beat revolution
they led made skiffle in general and Lonnie
Donegan in particular part of pop music’s past.
skiffle record: a repetitive, two-chord song that
depended for its effect upon galloping pace, an
ever-more frantic delivery and the odd all-purpose
ribald couplet arbitrarily mixed in (sample: ‘Two
old ladies sitting in the sand/Each one wishing
that the other was a man’). ‘Cumberland Gap’
also features an uncharacteristically haphazard
electric guitar solo from the normally dependable
session man Denny Wright that was definitely
not for the skiffle purists. None of this seemed to
matter: ‘Cumberland Gap’ was Donegan’s biggest
hit to date. Even so Anthony James Donegan
(like Chas McDevitt and Nancy Whiskey, a
Glaswegian) came from a jazz background – he
only assumed the ‘Lonnie’ handle to match his
skiffle persona – but soon seemed to be heading
for the realm of novelty songs. Recording comic
music hall numbers like ‘Does Your Chewing Gum
Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight’
and ‘My Old Man’s A Dustman’ suggested that
Donegan saw skiffle coming to an end quite
soon. It did and in one of life’s little ironies it
was effectively The Beatles who killed off his
career. Lennon met McCartney the same year
Donegan was riding high with ‘Cumberland
Gap’ and soon the British beat revolution
they led made skiffle in general and Lonnie
Donegan in particular part of pop music’s past.
Lonnie Donegan
Anthony James Donegan, who changed theface of British pop music, took himself
quite seriously and nursed a lifelong grudge
about only being paid a session fee for
‘Rock Island Line’which earned a gold disc
in the UK and reached the Top Ten in the US.