Chas McDevitt | |
|---|---|
 Chas McDevitt in 2017 | |
| Born | 4 December 1934 |
| Occupation | Musician |
Charles James McDevitt (born 4 December 1934) is a Scottish musician [1] who was 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. [2]
McDevitt was born in Eaglesham, Glasgow, Scotland. [3] His family moved to Camberley, Surrey, when he was a child. As a teenager he taught himself the banjo, and began corresponding with blues artists including Josh White. He also joined a local Dixieland jazz group. By 1955, he had moved to London, and began playing with the Crane River Jazz Band. [3] At the same time, he formed a small skiffle group, which busked and performed in coffee bars and jazz clubs in Soho. It won a talent contest, organised by Radio Luxembourg. [3]
In late 1956, whilst recording the song "Freight Train" – written by folk blues singer Elizabeth Cotten [3] – for Oriole Records, studio owner Bill Varley suggested they should add a female singer. [4] As a result, folk singer Nancy Whiskey was invited to join the Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group, and they re-recorded the song with her vocals. [3] The record became a hit in the UK in 1957 at the height of the skiffle boom, reaching Number 5 in the UK Singles Chart. [5]
In the United States, the song was covered by Rusty Draper, who had the bigger hit. Nevertheless, McDevitt's group appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show , their record became a million seller, [6] and their success led them to tour with acts such as Slim Whitman and Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers. They also replaced Jerry Lee Lewis on his ill-fated 1958 tour of the UK. The Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group was the only British skiffle group, other than Lonnie Donegan's, to achieve international success.[ citation needed ]
After Whiskey left in 1957, McDevitt had less commercial success, and his group disbanded around 1959. [3] He then formed a duo with his wife Shirley Douglas, [3] until their professional and personal relationship ended in the 1970s. Since then, McDevitt has continued to perform as the leader of a re-formed group, and also remains active in charitable work, including through his membership of the showbusiness charity the Grand Order of Water Rats.
Nancy Whiskey died in February 2003. More recently McDevitt appeared on the BBC Television show, Never Mind The Buzzcocks . [7]
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 in the first half of the 20th century, it became extremely popular in the United Kingdom in the 1950s, where it was played by such artists as Lonnie Donegan, the Vipers Skiffle Group, Ken Colyer, and Chas McDevitt. Skiffle was a major part of the early careers of some musicians who later became prominent jazz, pop, blues, folk, and rock performers, the Quarrymen and Rory Gallagher among them. It has been seen as a critical stepping stone to the second British folk revival, the British blues boom, and the British Invasion of American popular music.
Anthony James Donegan, known as Lonnie Donegan, was a British skiffle singer, songwriter and musician, referred to as the "King of Skiffle", who influenced 1960s British pop and rock musicians. Born in Scotland and brought up in England, Donegan began his career in the British trad jazz revival but transitioned to skiffle in the mid-1950s, rising to prominence with a hit recording of the American folk song "Rock Island Line" which helped spur the broader UK skiffle movement.
Michael Peter Hayes, known as Mickie Most, was an English record producer behind scores of hit singles for acts such as the Animals, Herman's Hermits, the Nashville Teens, Donovan, Lulu, Suzi Quatro, Hot Chocolate, Arrows, Racey and the Jeff Beck Group, often issued on his own RAK Records label.
John Renbourn was an English guitarist and songwriter. He was best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch as well as his work with the folk group Pentangle, although he maintained a solo career before, during and after that band's existence (1967–1973). He worked later in a duo with Stefan Grossman.
Helen Kate Shapiro is a British pop and jazz singer and actress. While still a teenager in the early 1960s, she was one of Britain's most successful female singers. With a voice described by AllMusic as possessing "the maturity and sensibilities of someone far beyond their teen years", Shapiro recorded two 1961 UK chart toppers, "You Don't Know" and "Walkin' Back to Happiness", when she was just 14 years old.
Wallace Victor "Wally" Whyton was a British musician, songwriter and radio and TV personality.
"Singing the Blues" is a popular song composed by Melvin Endsley and published in 1956. The highest-charting version was by Guy Mitchell and the first recording of the song was by Marty Robbins. It is not related to the 1920 jazz song "Singin' the Blues" recorded by Frank Trumbauer and Bix Beiderbecke in 1927.
Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten was an influential American folk and blues musician. She was a self-taught left-handed guitarist who played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down. This position meant that she would play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as "Cotten picking". NPR stated "her influence has reverberated through the generations, permeating every genre of music."
Oriole Records was a British record label, founded in 1925 by the London-based Levy Company, which owned a gramophone record subsidiary called Levaphone Records.
William Charles "Diz" Disley was an Anglo-Canadian jazz guitarist and banjoist. He is best known for his acoustic jazz guitar playing, strongly influenced by Django Reinhardt, for his contributions to the UK trad jazz, skiffle and folk scenes as a performer and humorist, and for his collaborations with the violinist Stéphane Grappelli.
The Silencers are a Scottish rock band formed in London in 1986 by Jimme O'Neill and Cha Burns, two ex-members of the post-punk outfit Fingerprintz. Their music is characterised by a melodic blend of pop, folk and traditional Celtic influences. Often compared to Scottish bands with a similar sound like Big Country, Del Amitri and The Proclaimers, The Silencers have distinguished themselves with their eclectic sounds, prolific output and continued career. Their first single, "Painted Moon," was a minor international hit and invited critical comparisons to Simple Minds and U2. In 1987 they released their first album A Letter From St. Paul, which included "Painted Moon" and another minor hit, "I See Red." Buoyed by the huge European hit "Bulletproof Heart", the band's third album Dance to the Holy Man is the band's commercial peak to date. Throughout the 1990s, The Silencers saw a popular taste shift away from their songwriter-based style of music toward grunge and electronic music.
The Rooftop Singers were an American country folk-singing trio in the early 1960s, best known for the hit "Walk Right In". The group was composed of Erik Darling and Bill Svanoe with former jazz singer Lynne Taylor (vocals).
"Rock Island Line" is an American folk song. Ostensibly about the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, it appeared as a folk song as early as 1929. The first recorded performance of "Rock Island Line" was by inmates of the Arkansas Cummins State Farm prison in 1934.
Nancy Whiskey was a Scottish folk singer, best known for the 1957 hit song, "Freight Train".
Farrell Haliday "Rusty" Draper was an American country and pop singer-songwriter and radio and TV host who achieved his greatest success in the 1950s.
The Vipers Skiffle Group – later known simply as The Vipers – were one of the leading British groups during the skiffle period of the mid to late 1950s, and were important in the careers of radio and television presenter Wally Whyton, coffee bar manager Johnny Martyn, wire salesman Jean Van den Bosch, instrument repairer Tony Tolhurst, journalist John Pilgrim, record producer George Martin, and several members of The Shadows.
Saturday Club was an influential BBC Radio programme in the United Kingdom, broadcast on the BBC Light Programme and later BBC Radio 1 between 1957 and 1969. It was one of the earliest – and for several years almost the only – radio programme in the country to broadcast pop music. Its longest-serving and best remembered host was Brian Matthew.
"Freight Train" is an American folk song written by Elizabeth Cotten in the early 20th century, and popularized during the American folk revival and British skiffle period of the 1950s and 1960s. By Cotten's own account in the 1985 BBC series Down Home, she composed "Freight Train" as a teenager, inspired by the sound of the trains rolling in on the tracks near her home in North Carolina.
British rhythm and blues was a musical movement that developed in the United Kingdom between the late 1950s and the early 1960s, and reached a peak in the mid-1960s. It overlapped with, but was distinct from, the broader British beat and more purist British blues scenes, attempting to emulate the music of American blues and rock and roll pioneers, such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. It often placed greater emphasis on guitars and was often played with greater energy.
The Migil Five were a British pop, rhythm and blues and (originally) jazz group in the early to mid-1960s, whose biggest hit was a bluebeat version of "Mockin' Bird Hill".
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
