Van Morrison, “Moving on Skiffle.”

Van Morrison wasn’t around when skiffle music first originated in the U.S. in the early 1900s, blending jazz, blues, bluegrass and folk, often played on handmade instruments like washboards, jugs and cigar-box fiddles in addition to guitars and banjos. But growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1950s, he was heavily influenced by it when it made a resurgence in the U.K. He wasn’t the only one. Skiffle music influenced the British folk revival, blues rock and the British Invasion itself. Even the Beatles took it and ran with it.

Moving on Skiffle, his 43rd album and first since 2021’s Latest Record Project Volume 1, is a 23-song tribute to the music that first influenced him as a youth. This collection eschews not only the blue-eyed soul on which he’s built his career and his frequent dives into blues and rock in favor of cleanly produced skiffle tunes that would have been right at home on the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack.

Tracks like “Freight Train” are built on multi-part harmony vocals (think of a barbershop quartet) with distinguished timbres, awash in tinny washboard rattles, rich organs and twangy guitars. Most if not all of them are new versions of standards from the Great American Songbook or its forebears. And many include slight touches here or there to add a sparkle or pep.

Take “This Loving Light of Mine,” a gospel standard (“This Little Light of Mine”) played as a barn-burner with scratchy washboard and a cacophony of banjo, guitar and twinkling piano keys. “In The Evening When The Sun Goes Down,” originally written in 1935 by Black bluesman Leroy Carr, who inspired the likes of Nat King Cole and Ray Charles, gets a mostly authentic laidback recreation highlighted by the harmonizing between Van Morrison and a set of female backup singers.

By the way, if you’re curious, “to make a skiffle” as a phrase was first published in 1873 and meant to make a mess of a situation. The more modern term dates back to the 1920s and 1930s and describes a “rent party,” a social gathering with a cover designed to help tenants pay their rent. It’s easy to imagine a song like “In The Evening When the Sun Goes Down” played at one of these.

Not all of these songs are quite so old. “Yonder Comes a Sucker” was originally written in 1955 by Nashville Sound white musician Jim Kerr. But Van Morrison’s version is less countrified and sounds more like it was written in New Orleans with it’s shuffling beat and yelled vocals.

Album opener “Freight Train” was originally written by Elizabeth Cotton, a childhood nanny to folk singer Peggy Seeger. The latter singer is the one who popularized it, but the version that Morrison would have heard first is Chris McDevitt’s which became a hit in the U.K. in 1956. Morrison’s own arrangement is a fun bluesy ride with vocalizations that sound like a train horn and harmonica riffing.

There’s a second railroad song in this collection, “Streamline Train,” this time with the washboard simulating the train rumbling down the tracks and some loose organ vamping. As with “Freight Train,” the version that Van Morrison would have heard was the one by U.K.’s Vipers Skiffle Group, which charted with it in 1957. But it was originally written in the 1930s by Mississippi bluesman Red Nelson. And Morrison’s version hews closer to the Deep South original.

Dickie Bishop’s 1957 tune “No Other Baby” sounds more like a country song in Van Morrison’s hands, with harmonica bursts. It’s nothing like the take that Paul McCartney recorded (which sounded more like Elvis trying out nu wave). The Vipers Skiffle Group had their own version, too. Van Morrison has some fun with history on “Gypsy Davy.” This countrified song was popularized in the U.S. in the 1930s, but actually originated in Scotland and in the U.K. much earlier as “The Raggle Taggle Gypsy.” Listen to this version enough times and it begins to sound like English folk artist Richard Thompson.

The biggest lyrical alteration on Moving on Skiffle is on “Gov Don’t Allow” (originally 1920s standard “Mama Don’t Allow”), shifting the focus from a child on his mama’s case to a government protest anthem about the rise of totalitarianism (or maybe it’s one last jab at pandemic mask mandates).

“Come On In” swings with fiddle and guitar noodling, “Greenback Dollar,” offers Motown accents and saxophone bursts by Van Morrison and ’50s rock guitar soloing by Dave Keary. “Wish I Was An Apple On A Tree” is a countrified take of another old American folk song, and Morrison’s cover of Hank Williams’ 1949 hit “I’m So Lonely I Could Cry”—possibly the most famous song of the bunch today—is close to a faithful recreation. But “Cold Cold Heart,” another Williams cover, is sped up into a jazzy honky tonk version. The album ends as strong as it is throughout, with a trio of “Worried Man Blues,” “Cotton Fields” and “Green Rocky Road.”

“Worried Man Blues” was first popularized by The Carter Family in 1930 and Woodie Guthrie in 1940, but this version is performed in the vein of  ’50s rock ‘n roll (think Chuck Berry). “Cotton Fields” is a Lead Belly classic. This one is bolder and brighter, but it’s a loving tribute.

“Green Rocky Road,” a traditional originally popularized in 1963 by Len Chandler and Robert Kaufman, was used in Joel and Ethan Coen’s film “Inside Llewyn Davis,” about the New York folk music scene in the ’60s. And if you’re curious, the Coens also made “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.