Splain sumpin to me please....

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 05:25 PM

Skiffle has an earlier history as well in America - it was one of the words meanin more or less the same as jug band. I seem to remember reading somewhere that if you needed to raise the rent, you might your friends together and make what music you could in a "skiffle party".

And that's where the word got taken from, when a word was needed for the interval music played by rhythm sections in a few trad jazz bands in England.

One skiffle group that made it pretty big were the Quarrymen in Liverpool. Grew into The Beatles, not at all a bad band. (Mind people have said they were a terrible skiffle group.)

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: bob jr
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 04:47 PM

skiffle grew out of the "trad" jazz revival in england. it gave the rhythm section something to do while the front line took a break for example lonnie donegan got his start in the "chris barber jazz band"

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 04:21 PM

Skiffle - cross between a skittle and a waffle. Very popular in the depression because it gave the unemployed man a game to play and something to eat later...

Oh.

Sorry.

It's not "Call my Bluff" is it?

D'oh!

Dave the Stupid Gnome

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: Naemanson
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 02:30 PM

Not a dumb question at all. Wish I'd had the guts to ask.

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: GUEST,Willa
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 02:29 PM

McGrath; I think you're probably right about tea chests. When I helped a friend to pack for a house removal recently the company supplied flatpack cardboard 'tea chests'. OK, I know they're environmentally friendly, but the old tea chests were very sturdy, and as Bill suggested, they were the sort of thing that most families would have knocking around in the attic, ready for conversion to instruments. I suppose the steel band instruments, which I think were often improvised from oil drums, were a similar example; not to mention the row of milk bottles filled with water I remember Mum amusing us with on occasions!

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: iamjohnne
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 02:28 PM

In fact I did have Spike Jones in mind. I dont need to look him up, I am old enough to remember him. Thanks though for posting an answer to my question/

Johnne "goin where the weather suits my clothes"

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 01:47 PM

Tea chest - light wooden box about two foot square, with metal frame holding it together. For transporting tea, but also used for removals and that. I suspect they're like gold dust now.

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: Willie-O
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 01:08 PM

A "Tea Chest Bass"? How English. The North American variant is, of course, the washtub bass.

I get this picture of a nice dovetailed wooden chest with a lid, and some vandal has attached a clothesline and a mop handle...

is it really a tin box?

W-O

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: Bill D
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 12:21 PM

a local group is called the "Sunshine Skiffle Band"...they have regular instruments (trumpet, clarinet, banjo...etc..), musical saw ...jugs...kazoos...washboards...almost anything. They are the Symphony of skiffle bands...really good and musical, as well as weird and silly....

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: Ralphie
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 11:47 AM

Also....
John Lennon (and the Moondogs)....Sure I saw a Tea Chest bass in their somewhere...c 1958/9..??
So, Skiffle did acheive something, I suppose..!
Ralphie...(keeping his head well below the parapet!)

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: Jeep man
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 10:55 AM

Spike Jones in the 60's. Worth looking for. Jeep

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: iamjohnne
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 10:36 AM

Thanks folks I think I get it now. I love jug band music along with everything else that seems to be "folk music" I was thinking that I knew pretty much what skiffle is and I was right. I just wanted to be sure.

Johnne :goin where the weather suits my clothes"

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: catspaw49
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 10:31 AM

Good explanation Bill.......and I'm sitting here trying to think of something that Johnne can relate to in the US and all I can think of is something like "Jim Kweskin meets the Kingston Trio."...............which is kinda' hideous to think about. There's gotta' be something better than that...

Spaw

Subject: RE: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: bill\sables
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 10:15 AM

Skiffle was a form of music popular in the 50s in the UK. One of it's main exponents was Lonnie Donegan who took American songs like Warbash Cannonball, Grand Coolie Dam, amd Tom Dooley and made hit records with them in England. What he did as well was to let the young people know that music didn't have to be played on expensive instruments. All you needed was a guitar or banjo to carry the tune and the rest could be done with washboards and tea chest bass. Skiffle groups sprung up in every village and town and got a lot of kids playing music most of them went on to the folk music scene in the 60s.

Subject: Splain sumpin to me please....
From: iamjohnne
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 08:50 AM

I am fairly new here. At least new to posting here.And I dont mean to sound dumb. I was told along time ago that a no question is a stupid question if I dont know the answer. So at the risk of sounding dumb--actually I am not dumb just uninformed.... what is "skiffle" When you talk about it, everyone but me seems to know what it is. Please "splain" it to me.

Johnne

"goin where the weather suits my clothes"