Tea-chest bass, washboard and drums

The tea-chest bass was skiffle's inexpensive replacement for the traditional upright double-bass. Rod Davis recalls several versions of the group's tea-chest. " One of them was painted black, and again had the treble clef on it, plus a couple of notes. There was another covered in white wallpaper with brown lines on it - we had some paper left over from our lounge, and I remember my mum wallpapering the tea-chest. With a piece of string and a broomstick handle, it worked very well. You could get quite a good range of notes out of it." ¹⁵

Pete Shotton played the washboard in The Quarry' Men, with thimbles on his fingers to scrape the ribbed board and produce a steady, percussive scratch, filling out the rhythm section. The Quarry Men's drummer was Colin Hanton. A drum kit was rare in skiffle groups, mainly because drums cost so much more than a guitar. Hanton's kit was a John Grey Broadway outfit, part of a line of budget-price drums made by British instrument manufacturer and distributor Rose-Morris. Hanton purchased the kit at Hessy's music store in Liverpool - a shop that would become an important source of Beatle equipment in the coming years. " There was a small bass drum, " says Hanton of his Broadway kit, " a floor tom, a tom tom, a snare drum, a cymbal, and that was it. No hi-hat. The heads were made of calfskin, It was finished in white lacquer paint - going on orange now, " he laughs.

The Quarry Men decided it would be good to have their name on the front of the bass-drum head. " At first I had my name on it in black, " says Hanton, " which I did myself. But my friend Charles Roberts was an apprentice printer, and he made me a nameplate out of a circular piece of paper which fitted over the bass-drum head. It was in florescent orange with black lettering, very professional. In the top left corner it had 'Colin Hanton' and then 'The Quarry Men Skiffle Group' across the middle in a sort of fancy longhand style. It was brilliant, actually. What a pity it's lost." ¹⁶

One of the first Quarry Men performances was on Saturday June 22nd 1957 at a street party in Rosebery Street, Liverpool 8. The Quarry Men played on the back of a Hat-bed coal lorry. The show was arranged by Hanton's printer friend Charles Roberts, and the group's line-up for the performance was Lennon on his Gallotone flat-top guitar, Griffiths on his Egmond arch top, Len Garry on tea-chest bass, Pete Shotton on washboard, Rod Davis on his Windsor banjo, and Colin Hanton on the Broadway drum set. Lennon recalled, " We didn't get paid. We played at blokes' parties after that, or weddings, perhaps got a few bob. Mostly we just played for fun." ¹⁷