"Mama Don't Want to Skiffle Anymore"

A thirteen year old Jimmy Page performing on The BBC program "The Hugh Weldon Show" in 1957.  This was at the height of the Skiffle craze in England perpetuated by the likes of such guitarist like Lonny Donegan. Skiffle was easy to play and accessible to all; if you had a washboard you could be in a skiffle band. Jimmy wasn't the only future Rock and Roll superstar to get their start in Skiffle, John Lennon's first band "The Quarrymen" was a skiffle group, of course you know who they eventually turned into.

This seems to be an exceedingly easy song, but nevertheless lets examine it. Jimmy appears to be playing a Hofner Senator, which is a large jazz-box style of acoustic guitar, I can't really make out the name, or identify the brand though.  He's playing with just his thumb and pumping the chords, very primitive, but thus was skiffle.

This song is three chords from what I can see, and I did have to use my eyes and ears to decipher this one; oddly there weren't any chord charts or tabs for this song anywhere (such a hit!). The first and the one played through the majority of the song is a simple E chord. This is played from the beginning of the first line to the end, then changes to a B7 chord. It shifts back to an E, then goes to an A chord then back to E, from there to B7 and finally E. So it goes like this

E
Mama don't allow no skiffle around here, oh no she don't
E                                                          B7
Mama don't allow no skiffle around here
E                                                   A           
We don't care what mama allow, gonna play that skiffle any 'ole how
E                            B7                        E
Mama don't allow no skiffle around here

And that's basically how it goes through the whole song.  One minor note, at one point in the song, Jimmy plays the A chord at the 7th fret but not barred so it looks like this:

0
5
6
7
7
0

A neat little trick, even at an early age, an out of the box kinda guy. Cool little song, very simple to play, and a great way to kick this off. If you can play three chords and three chords only, you can now play a Jimmy Page song.