Lonnie Donegan Showcase

Lonnie Donegan Showcase
Lonnie Donegan Showcase
Studio album by Lonnie Donegan with His Skiffle Group
Released	December 1956
Recorded	22 – 23 August 1956
Genre	Skiffle; blues; jazz; folk blues;
Length	26:30
Label	Pye Nixa
Lonnie Donegan with His Skiffle Group chronology

Lonnie Donegan Showcase (also known as Showcase) is the debut album by British musician Lonnie Donegan, credited to Lonnie Donegan with His Skiffle Group. Released by Pye Nixa in December 1956, the album followed a string of successful singles – including "Rock Island Line" – released by Donegan between 1955 and 1956 that established him as a solo artist, separate from the Chris Barber Jazz Band, and popularised his distinctive style of skiffle music, a genre that mixes folk, jazz and blues, in the United Kingdom.

Recorded over two days in August 1956, Showcase avoids including Donegan's hit singles in favour of eight new recordings of songs from Donegan's live repertoire, including country, folk and blues standards, and the use of a full band – including guitarist Denny Wright – lends the album a more driving sound than his earlier, washboard-augmented style. The record's anonymous sleeve notes, which avoid naming Donegan as a teen singer, contend that these performances changed critical perception of the singer. Ahead of the album's release, Donegan undertook variety tour that travelled throughout Britain in late 1956, and promoted the album on Jack Payne's BBC show Off the World.

On its initial release as a 10" LP, Lonnie Donegan Showcase sold a then-impressive amount for an album, totalling several hundred thousand copies, and spent seven non-consecutive weeks at number two on the UK albums chart, as well as topping several regional jazz charts. The sales were also strong enough for the album to enter the UK singles chart, typically reserved for 45 and 78 rpm singles, where it reached number 26, becoming the only album by a British act to do so. Showcase has since been cited as an early example of a British blues album and a major influence on later artists, particularly through its raw, DIY aesthetic. In 2025, Uncut ranked it at number 12 in their list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of the 1950s".