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Ken Colyer
Biography
As one of England's leading trad jazz exponents, Ken Colyer's influence would have been confined to his own country were it not for a spin-off that would inadvertently lead to great changes in the music world at large. Self-taught on trumpet and guitar, Colyer was a founding member of the Crane River Jazz Band (1949-1953), a New Orleans-styled band that he left in late 1951 in order to join the Merchant Marines with the intention of shipping out to New Orleans itself and jamming with local legends. Upon his return to England in March 1953, Colyer joined a group founded by Monty Sunshine and Chris Barber that soon became Ken Colyer's Jazzmen. As in the Crane River group, Colyer's shows included a "band within a band" segment that purported to educate audiences about the roots of jazz, playing a guitar-based, highly rhythmic mutation of American folk music that became known as skiffle. When Colyer left the Jazzmen in 1954, the group coalesced around Barber and its banjo player, Lonnie Donegan, who went on to have a hit skiffle record "Rock Island Line" that caught the imagination of a Liverpool youngster named John Lennon...and you know the rest of that story.
Selected Discography