THIS WEEK IN 1960
1 My Old Man’s A Dustman Lonnie Donegan
2 Fall In Love With You Cliff Richard and the Shadows 3 Handy Man Jimmy Jones
4 Do You Mind? Anthony Newley
5 Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’be Max Bygraves 6 Stuck On You Elvis Presley
7 Theme From ‘A Summer Place’ Percy Faith 8 Beatnik Fly Johnny and the Hurricanes
9 Running Beat Johnny Preston
10 You Got What It Takes Mary Johnson
If you’re turning 60 this week, this was the UK top ten in the week you were born. ‘My Old Man’s A Dustman’ was also a number one hit in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and sold more than a million around the world.
Known as the King of Skiffle, Lonnie Donegan was born in Glasgow, to an Irish mother, but grew up in London. He was the most successful and influential British recording star before the Beatles, clocking up 31 top 30 hit singles in the UK, including three number ones.
In the fifties, Donegan was Britain’s main proponent of skiffle, a genre influenced by jazz, blues and American folk generally performed with a mix of conventional and homemade or improvised instruments.
The music hall style of ‘My Old Man’s A Dustman’ did not appeal to many skiffle fans, but that did not hinder its success. The song was written by Donegan, his manager Peter Buchanan, and Beverly Thorn, a pseudonym of Leslie Bricusse who wrote a number of hit musicals with Anthony Newley (including ‘Willie Wonka & The Chocolate Factory’). It’s thought the song had its origins in ‘My Father Was A Fireman’, a tune often sung by British World War I troops. The melody is borrowed from Igor Stravinsky’s ‘Petrushka’.
The version of ‘My Old Man’s A Dustman’ released by Donegan on March 16, 1960, had been recorded live at the Gaumont cinema in Doncaster just a few weeks earlier, on 20 February.
Lonnie Donegan’s follow-up single, ‘I Wanna Go Home (Wreck of the ‘John B’)’ – later a hit for the Beach Boys under the title ‘Sloop John B’ – reached number 5 in the UK charts in 1960. It was his final top five chart entry in the UK as he fell out of fashion and beat music began to dominate.
He continued to perform and record sporadically through the following decades, but did suffer cardiac health issues. He died on November 3, 2002, aged 71, after a heart attack midway through a UK tour, and before he was due to perform at a memorial concert for George Harrison. – JIM HAYES