hi Like others here I seemed to have been born just loving any kind of music. However it was Lonnie Donnegan that actually influenced me to buy a guitar and actually learn to play so that I could achieve my ambition to play and sing in public. My old man had a couple of Donnegan records and although the skiffle wave had started to fade into memory I bought an old Hofner guitar and started to teach myself to play along with Lonnie. I have to be honest and say that I wasn't a great admirer of Lonnie's music but it got me playing. So I will always be thankful to Lonnie. By some strange chance I actually met up with Lonnie some years later. He was visiting some people who he stayed with as an evacuee many years earlier in my home town in Cheshire, though I was unaware of this. The guy who he stayed with by this time was the Mayor and Lonnie came up to do a set for the Mayor's charity. I was playing with a band on the same show. We had a beer together and talked about Jazz. Cheers John
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