Freight Trains, Last Trains and Rock Island Lines

Liner Note Author: Groper Odson.The term "skiffle" first popped up in America in the 1920s, but it wasn't directly a musical term referring to the various folk, blues, and street jazz jug and string bands then popular across the country. It was instead a slang term for a house rent party, as in "we're having a skiffle this Friday night." The term vanished from use in the 1940s and most likely would have stayed gone except for its revival in 1950s Britain as a word to describe the music played by various jug and string band-like groups influenced by American blues, folk, and New Orleans street jazz. Largely through the hitmaking ability of Lonnie Donegan, whose chart-topping version of Leadbelly's "Rock Island Line" in 1955 established skiffle as both a style and a commercial viability, the style swept through the U.K., setting the stage for the first true British blues and rock & roll bands, whose arrival doomed skiffle to the back porch of pop history. This set traces the British