AMG Review of This Yere de Story

Dave Thompson
All Music Guide

This Yere de Story is an excellent package, combining music and some infectiously enjoyable interview material to serve up an "in his own words" style document of Lonnie Donegan's most successful years. The music needs no introduction, of course. From "Putting on the Style" to "My Old Man's a Dustman," from "The Battle of New Orleans" to "The House of the Rising Sun," Donegan's reinvention of the American folk-blues canon was largely responsible for birthing the British rock & roll industry in the first place; for many young blues musicians of the early 1960s, it was Donegan who brought them their first exposure to the music. It is the anecdotes and stories that ride between the songs, then, that make this collection stand out, as the Skiffle King looks back over the years, to discuss his own influences and beginnings, the lengths to which he'd go in search of fresh, new material and so much more. Of course, one can wish that this set had been produced as a video documentary, with period footage and talking heads, and the fact that Donegan is no longer with us only amplifies that regret. But still this is a remarkable archive, and one that all Donegan fans need to visit.