[4] He was the son of an Irish mother (Mary Josephine Deighan) and a Scots father (Peter John Donegan), a professional violinist who had played with the Scottish National Orchestra.
[5] Donegan was evacuated to Cheshire to escape the Blitz in the Second World War and attended St Ambrose College in Hale Barns.
[5] He learned songs such as "Frankie and Johnny", "Puttin' On the Style", and "The House of the Rising Sun" by listening to BBC radio broadcasts.
[8] Donegan first played in a major band after Chris Barber heard that he was a good banjo player and, on a train, asked him to audition.
[10] While in Ken Colyer's Jazzmen with Chris Barber, Donegan sang and played guitar and banjo in their Dixieland set.
[8] With a washboard, tea-chest bass, and a cheap Spanish guitar, Donegan played folk and blues songs by artists such as Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie.
[5] This proved popular and in July 1954 he recorded a fast version of Lead Belly's "Rock Island Line",[4] featuring a washboard but not a tea-chest bass, with "John Henry" on the B-side.
[5] It was a hit in 1956[11] (which also later inspired the creation of a full album, An Englishman Sings American Folk Songs, released in America on the Mercury label in the early 1960s), but because it was a band recording, Donegan made no money beyond his session fee.
[5] The Acoustic Music organisation made this comment about Donegan's "Rock Island Line": "It flew up the English charts.
[5] Decca dropped Donegan thereafter, but within a month he was at the Abbey Road Studios in London recording for EMI's Columbia label.
[5] Returning to the UK, he recorded his debut album, Lonnie Donegan Showcase, in summer 1956, with songs by Lead Belly and Leroy Carr, plus "Ramblin' Man" and "Wabash Cannonball".
Donegan's "Gamblin' Man"/"Puttin' On the Style" single was number one in the UK in July 1957, when Lennon first met Paul McCartney.
[1] His Skiffle rendition of Hank Snow's Country song "Nobody's Child" was also the inspiration for Tony Sheridan's blues version which he recorded with the Beatles as his backing band.
[5] He turned to music hall style with "My Old Man's a Dustman" which was not well received by skiffle fans and unsuccessful in America on Atlantic in 1960,[4] but it reached number one in the UK.
[4] Donegan's group had a flexible line-up, but was generally Denny Wright or Les Bennetts, playing lead guitar and singing harmony, Micky Ashman or Pete Huggett—later Steve Jones—on upright bass, Nick Nichols—later Pete Appleby, Mark Goodwin, and Ken Rodway on drums or percussion, and Donegan playing acoustic guitar or banjo and singing the lead.
[5] Donegan was not popular through the late 1960s and 1970s (although his "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" was recorded by Tom Jones in 1967 and Elvis Presley in 1976), and he began to play the American cabaret circuit.
In 1983, Donegan toured with Billie Jo Spears, and in 1984 he made his theatrical debut in a revival of the 1920 musical Mr Cinders.
[16] Lonnie Donegan died on 3 November 2002, aged 71, after having a heart attack in Market Deeping, Lincolnshire mid-way through a UK tour,[17] and before he was due to perform at a memorial concert for George Harrison with the Rolling Stones.
On his album A Beach Full of Shells, Al Stewart paid tribute to Donegan in the song "Katherine of Oregon".
[citation needed] Peter Sellers recorded Puttin' on the Smile featuring "Lenny Goonagain", who travels to the "Deep South" of Brighton and finds an "obscure folk song hidden at the top of the American hit parade", re-records it and reaches number one in the UK.