Obit: Johnny Duncan has taken last train

Subject: RE: Obit: Johnny Duncan
From: Peace
Date: 27 Jul 05 - 03:35 PM

Bio here.

Subject: RE: Johnny Duncan has taken last train
From: Tam the man
Date: 27 Jul 05 - 03:31 PM

Johnny Duncan a great man so sad

Subject: Obit: Johnny Duncan
From: Tam the man
Date: 27 Jul 05 - 03:28 PM

I know that this is a bit Late, but in the year 2000, Johnny Duncan of Skiffle fame had died, I know it's late but I can't remember anyone posting a thread about him.

Tom

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I moved this message here from another thread on the same topic.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Johnny Duncan has taken last train
From: GUEST,Baz
Date: 20 Jul 00 - 10:18 AM

Thanks for posting this Roger.
I can remember seeing Johnny many years ago in Soho with Chas McDevitt.
It's sad to hear lately of so many of ones 'heros' moving on.
Baz

Subject: Johnny Duncan has taken last train
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 20 Jul 00 - 05:50 AM

Obituary in today's London Guardian
Johnny Duncan died inAustralia

by John Pilgrim Thursday July 20, 2000

In the summer of 1957, the Tennessee singer Johnny Duncan, who has died of cancer in Australia aged 67, achieved a one-off hit, Last Train To San Fernando.

It epitomised the spirit of the British skiffle boom, remained in the top 20 for weeks and featured an irritating, compulsive catchline that reverberated down the rest of the century.

Duncan had not wanted to record the song - he was a hillbilly country singer with one eye on rock 'n' roll - and he was to pay a price for his association with skiffle. But he had a good voice, a talent for the guitar and mandolin, and, in an era when inept imitation of transatlantic rock 'n' roll plagued British pop, he was, at least, a real American.

It was a time when Musicians Union restrictions limiting the entry of American stars increased the exoticism of those few transatlantic imports. And Duncan was the first in a line of US pop singers - Geno Washington, the Walker Brothers, PJ Proby et al - whose careers blossomed in Britain.

Duncan was a miner's son, born in Oliver Springs, Tennessee. He sang with his local church choir and later with a gospel quartet before heading for Texas in his mid-teens. There he learned guitar and performed with a hillbilly trio. Then came the draft. He arrived as a serviceman in England in 1952. A year later he married a Cambridgeshire girl, Betty. After a brief return to the US, her illness and homesickness brought them back, and he briefly worked on her father's market clothes stall.

It was while performing at the American Club in Bushey Park that Duncan attracted the attention of Dickie Bishop, banjoist with the then hugely successful Chris Barber jazz band. The band had been the launchpad for the "king of skiffle", Lonnie Donegan, who had quit Barber following the phenomenal success of Rock Island Line. Bishop recalls inviting Duncan to the White Hart in Southall to meet Barber - and he was taken on for £10 a week. The American stayed with the band - or with the Chris Barber Skiffle Group, within it - for a year, performing live, recording and broadcasting.

By early 1957, alongside the impact of American rock 'n' roll, skiffle, that "peculiar mixture of country, gospel, folk and blues" as Duncan's sometime recording manager Keith Glass labelled it, had emerged as a British phenomenon, and indeed the seedbed of domestic rock 'n' roll, with Donegan and others enjoying a string of hits.

Thus did Duncan leave Barber and, guided by producer Dennis Preston, recruited the Blue Grass Boys, Lennie Hastings, Denny Wright, Jack Fallon and Danny Levan. Their first single, Hank Williams's Kaw Liga in April 1957, flopped. Then, two months later, came Last Train To San Fernando. The Duke Of Iron had recorded the song as a calypso, and Preston's Caribbean wife had drawn the song to her husband's attention. "I'd have chucked it in the trash can," Duncan said subsequently, an observation which may have led later to suggestions that he was a redneck racist.

But Preston would not have recorded him if he had been; Fallon refutes the charge, and so do those - like me - who played on the same circuit as he did. Duncan just didn't like the song. It was fortunate that Wright did. With Duncan's bassist and manager Jack Fallon, Wright worked up an arrangement - and provided the sparkling guitar - that, together with Duncan's singing, made it a best seller.

It was Paul Anka's multi-million selling Diana that blocked it from number one. Duncan the Tennessee hillbilly singer briefly became a British star. He sounded authentic. When he sang of "blowing down that old dusty road", listeners believed he had been there, rather than - as with his English contemporaries - confined hard travelling to the number nine bus route.

He headlined over visiting Americans singers like Marvin Rainwater, starred on BBC television's first teen slot, The 6.5 Special, had his own BBC radio series, Tennessee Songbag, and toured variety halls with the likes of Wee Willie Harris and the new sensation, Cliff Richard. No other Duncan record achieved Last Train's success, but a few other tracks, like Footsteps In The Snow, crept into the charts.

In the 1960s he returned to the US before settling in Sunderland, where he recorded two albums in the early 1970s. He toured Australia in 1972, and subsequently emigrated to New South Wales. Later he met his new partner, Heather Walls, and slipped back contentedly into country life. In the last decade, a reassessment of skiffle renewed interest in his work. Some of his recordings were re-released, and Duncan, enthusiasm rekindled, recorded a few more sides. He is survived by Heather, four daughters and a son.

• John Franklin Duncan, musician, born September 7 1932; died July 15 2000
RtS