ABSTRACT
Lonnie Donegan was banjo player and guitarist in Chris Barber’s New Orleans-style jazz band when his single “Rock Island Line,” originally recorded as a side project, became a huge hit in both Britain and the US. Subsequently dubbed “the King of Skiffle,” in honor of his role in helping launch a popular music youth movement in the UK, Donegan’s performance style drew as much on the earlier traditions of British music hall as on the radical American songwriters, such as Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, whose songs he recorded. Later, Donegan became a variety star rather than a hit-making teen idol, but his continued use of both verbal and physical comedy to address issues of social class and oppression remains an example of “contestive humor” as a political and artistic strategy.
