The Bill Bailey Skiffle Group made seven appearances on

BBC Radio BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927). The service provides national radio stations covering th ...

's ''Saturday Skiffle Club'' (only Johnny Duncan and

Chas McDevitt Charles James McDevitt (born 4 December 1934) is a Scottish musician, one of the leading lights of the skiffle genre which was highly influential and popular in the United Kingdom in the mid-to-late 1950s. Biography McDevitt was born in Eaglesh ...

had more slots on the show) yet no record company ever signed them up. They lay claim to have been the first

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

skiffle Skiffle is a genre of folk music with influences from American folk music, blues, country, bluegrass, and jazz, generally performed with a mixture of manufactured and homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a form in the United States ...

group because in 1945, Bill Bailey, Freddy Legon and Johnny Jones formed the Original London Blue Blowers. They were featured in

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

broadcasts and as guests in the rhythm clubs that flourished on the fringes of the music scene, mainly playing spasm music and jug music. The combo broke up in 1948 when the two

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

players began playing in various

Dixieland Dixieland jazz, also referred to as traditional jazz, hot jazz, or simply Dixieland, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The 1917 recordings by the Original Dixieland Jass Band ( ...

bands. While Freddy Legon was playing guitar and

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

with the

Humphrey Lyttelton Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton (23 May 1921 – 25 April 2008), also known as Humph, was an English jazz musician and broadcaster from the Lyttelton family. Having taught himself the trumpet at school, Lyttelton became a professional ...

Band in 1951, he advised a 16-year-old Charles McDevitt on the type of banjo he should take up.

Personnel

* Bill Bailey – guitar, kazoo, vocals * Dave Coward – bass * Stan Jayne – guitar, washboard, vocals * Bill Powell – guitar, banjo * Freddy Legon – guitar,

comb and paper Comb and paper is a rudimentary musical instrument which consists of a comb with a piece of paper pressed to it. To play it, one has to press their lips to the paper pressed to the comb and sing or vocalize into it. The voice makes the paper vibra ...

, vocals * John Beauchamp – drums

References

{{Reflist British pop music groups British folk music groups Skiffle groups