Nancy Whiskey

Singer remembered for the bizarre skiffle hit 'Freight Train'

Anne Alexandra Young Wilson (Nancy Whiskey), singer and guitarist: born Glasgow 4 March 1935; married Bob Kelly (died 1999; one daughter); died Leicester 1 February 2003.

Nancy Whiskey is the one name, apart from Lonnie Donegan, that everyone remembers from the Fifties skiffle era.

The song that gave her a surprise hit, "Freight Train", was already known in London around the Soho coffee bars. An earlier attempt to record it by the Vipers (Wally Whyton's group) had been rejected by their producer George Martin as "not commercial"; even Whiskey's version with Chas McDevitt's Skiffle Group was something of a sleeper, taking off three months after release and then charting on both sides of the Atlantic. It is a classic irony that Whiskey, a folk singer by vocation, didn't actually like skiffle and was frequently heard to say so in robust Glaswegian terms. "Don't tell my mother what I'm doing," she used to tell audiences. "She thinks I work in a brothel."

She was born Anne Wilson in Bridgeton, Glasgow, in 1935 and was taught the guitar by her father. She worked in a pottery, attended art school, and began to appear on the nascent folk-club circuit. At art school she met Jimmie McGregor (later to achieve fame with Robin Hall on the television programme Tonight). It was McGregor who taught her the folksong "The Carlton Weaver". Its refrain "Whisky, whisky, Nancy Whisky" gave her the name by which she became known. At the end of 1955, with the pianist – and her future husband – Bob Kelly, she moved to London.

As a folk singer she was already being taken seriously enough to record for the folk-specialist label Topic, and feelers from big labels like Pye-Nixa made her hesitant about joining up with Chas McDevitt. However his persuasiveness worked its magic. "Freight Train" was recorded and took off. It was a bizarre hit. Whiskey's chirpy delivery and McDevitt's cheerful whistled accompaniment were not apparently appropriate to lines like "Got no future, got no hope, got nothing but the rope". The American and British public didn't seem to care: it was a near million-seller in the US and no radio listener in Britain could escape it.

The immediate result was chaotic and rushed trips to America to appear at music conventions, on the Ed Sullivan Show, and at Palisades Park, New Jersey. In Britain she appeared in the Terry Dene film The Golden Disc (1958), and recorded an LP, The Intoxicating Miss Whiskey (1957), with McDevitt. Then she dropped a bombshell. She was leaving to have a baby and marry the father, Bob Kelly. The tabloids seized on this when Kelly's estranged wife called a press conference to describe why this might be difficult under existing law. It was a nine-day wonder in those more innocent but prurient days. Nevertheless the marriage did take place and lasted until Kelly's death in 1999. The two produced a daughter, Yancey, named after the blues piano player Jimmy Yancey.

After the birth Whiskey returned to music, touring with her own group the Teetotallers, which included Kelly playing piano and drums and the guitarist Diz Disley. However, the illness that was to make Kelly a permanent invalid was already becoming apparent and on a number of occasions I was called on to deputise for him while Whiskey built up a cabaret act that would enable her to support her husband and daughter.

In the years that followed she recorded a couple of LPs including one of ballads with a big band, but she never again repeated the extraordinary success of "Freight Train". After years of low-key touring she largely retired from music and settled in Leicester.

John Pilgrim