Coventry Evening Telegraph
Coventry's Paul Leegan, the world's only known Donegan tribute artist, watched the legend's final concert from the stage wings as an impromptu understudy.
Mention Lonnie Donegan and it won't be long before some one half-shouts: "Ohhh, my old man's a dustman, he wears a dustman's hat, he wears gore blimey trousers, and he lives in a council flat."
The knockabout ditty is Donegan's best-known song, and sold a million copies in Britain alone when it was released in 1960.
But My Old Man's A Dustman was a disappointing sellout for many fans, because it undermined Donegan's ground-breaking work to bring upbeat American music to these shores. Few have done more to educate people about Donegan's contribution to pop than Coventry musician Paul Leegan, who was on standby as a last-minute understudy at Donegan's final concert last week.
Raucous
The common misconception that Donegan only did novelty songs made Paul turn down the chance to appear as him on ITV tribute show Stars in Their Eyes. " I got short listed, but all they wanted me to sing was My Old Man's A Dustman. That's not what he was all about."
Before Donegan burst on to the scene in the mid-1950s, Britain had no pop scene at all. When Paul was a boy growing up in Green Lane, Coventry the radio crackled with dreary ballads and the warblings of Max Bygraves.
Donegan's first hit, Rock Island Line, was a wake-up call for Britain's teenagers. The song, about a cheeky train driver conning a railroad toll inspector, chugged along with a simple, driving rhythm.
Paul, aged 53, says: "Suddenly this bloke came along and took the world by storm. Donegan, aged 25 when Rock Island Line went to No.1 in 1956, had been introduced to country and western music by an American soldier he met during military service in Vienna. He was good-looking, and his raucous songs were easy to copy and disapproved of by parents.
He had an incredible 26 hits between 1956 and 1962 and inspired many of the budding stars who were later to oust him from the top of the British pop scene, including the Beatles.
Paul, aged 10 when he first heard Donegan, was a little young to be one of the pioneers who started skiffle bands. He started out playing working men's clubs in the late 1960s.
Although Paul has been performing Donegan's songs live for 25 years, his tribute act only really took off in recent years. After pulling out of Stars In Their Eyes in 1997, he appeared as Donegan in a handful of theatre shows. At one show at the Lakeside Country Club in Surrey the real Lonnie Donegan was in the audience.
Paul, who is single and lives in north Coventry, says: "He was so gob smacked by my portrayal of him that he gave me permission to go out and be him. I was over the moon."
The two men became friends and met up during Donegan's tours. Paul took redundancy from his job as a supervisor at Land Rover in Solihull and became a full-time tribute artist. Eight days ago Paul went to Nottingham to show his hero a limited edition Lonnie Donegan guitar he had ordered from top American guitar firm Martin.
"I took the guitar over to his hotel. He was just sitting there, complaining of back problems. But he asked me to get the guitar out anyway. He played a song called Lost John.
Amazing show
"He'd had three heart by-passes, and doctors told him years ago he should pack it up. But the performances he gave, for a 71-year-old man, were not of this planet.
"The doctors worked on him for an hour and a half, then pumped him full of painkillers. Lonnie couldn't even get out of the chair. He was told he absolutely must not perform that night. But as a true professional, he went ahead and did it.
"He asked me that if anything did happen, would I use his band and get out on stage and do some of his numbers. So I was waiting in the wings in case he walked off and couldn't do anything more. But he went on and did an amazing show.
"When I was told he had died, I was numb. It was only last Wednesday that we were having a ball together, and now he's gone."
Tomorrow night Paul will perform for the first time since Donegan's death, at a music industry showcase in Leicestershire. "It is going to be very difficult," he says. "But when I go on, I shall tell the audience it's what Lonnie would have wanted."
Coventry Evening Telegraph - 7/11/02
