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Anaesthesia for Dentistry with Dr. Ewan McPherson. anaesthesiafordentistry.c... |
Ewan MacColl (25 January 1915 - 22 October 1989) was a British folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer. He is the father of singer/songwriter Kirsty MacColl.
[edit] Early historyMacColl was born James (Jimmie) Henry Miller in Broughton, Salford, Lancashire in England, to Scottish parents, William and Betsy Miller (Betsy née Hendry). Both his parents were socialists and William Miller was an iron-moulder and militant trade unionist who had moved to Salford with his wife to look for work after being blacklisted in almost every foundry in Scotland.[1] They lived amongst a group of emigre scots and Jimmie, their only surviving child, was brought up in an atmosphere of fierce political debate interspersed with the large repertoire of songs and stories his parents had brought from Scotland.[1] He left school in 1930 during the Great Depression and, joining the ranks of the unemployed, began a life-long programme of self education whilst keeping warm in the Manchester Public Library.[1] During this period he found intermittent work in a number of jobs and also made money as a street singer. [1] He joined the Young Communist League and the socialist amateur theatre troupe, the Clarion Players. He began his career as a writer helping produce, and contributing humorous verse and skits to some of the Communist Party's factory papers. He was an activist in the unemployed workers campaigns and the mass trespasses of the early 1930s. One of his best-known songs, "The Manchester Rambler," was written after the pivotal mass trespass of Kinder Scout. He was responsible for publicity in the planning of the trespass. In 1932 the British counterintelligence service, MI5, began a file on MacColl, after the local police told them that the singer was a "a communist with very extreme views" who needed "special attention".[2] For a time the Special Branch kept a watch on the Manchester home that he shared with his wife Joan Littlewood. MI5 caused some of MacColl's songs to be rejected by the BBC, and prevented the employment of Joan Littlewood as a BBC children's programme presenter. [edit] Acting careerIn 1931, with other unemployed members of the Clarion Players he formed an agit-prop theatre group, the "Red Megaphones." During 1934 they changed the name to Theatre of Action and not long after were introduced to a young actress recently moved up from London. This was Joan Littlewood who became Miller's wife and work partner. In 1936, after a failed attempt to relocate to London, the couple returned to Manchester, and formed Theatre Union. In 1940 a performance of The Last Edition - a 'living newspaper' - was halted by the police and Miller and Littlewood were bound over for two years for 'breach of the peace'. The necessities of wartime brought an end to Theatre Union. MacColl enlisted in the British Army during July 1940, but deserted in December. Why he did so, and why he was not prosecuted after the war, remain a mystery.[2] In 1946 members of Theatre Union and others formed Theatre Workshop and spent the next few years touring, mostly in the north of England. Jimmie Miller had by then changed his name to Ewan MacColl (influenced by the Lallans movement in Scotland).[1] In Theatre Union roles had been shared but now, in Theatre Workshop, they were more formalised. Littlewood was the sole producer and MacColl the dramaturge, art director and resident dramatist. The techniques that had been developed in Theatre Union now were refined, producing the distinctive form of theatre which was the hallmark of Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop as the troupe was later known. They were an impoverished travelling troupe, but were making a name for themselves. [edit] MusicDuring this period MacColl's enthusiasm for folk music grew. In 1953 Theatre Workshop opted to settle in Stratford, London, and MacColl, who was opposed to the move, left and began to concentrate on the promotion and performance of folk music. His long involvement with Topic Records was first obvious during 1950 when he released a single "The Asphalter's Song" on the label. As well as writing and performing, MacColl followed in the footsteps of his colleague Alan Lomax and collected traditional ballads. Over the years he recorded upwards of a hundred albums, many with English folk song collector and singer A.L. Lloyd. The two together released a series of eight records of the Child Ballads, many of which appeared on his other albums. MacColl also produced a number of LPs with Irish singer songwriter Dominic Behan. During 1956, MacColl caused a scandal by starting a relationship with Peggy Seeger, who was twenty years his junior, while married to his second wife, the dancer Jean Newlove, the mother of two of his children, Hamish (b. 1950) and Kirsty (b. 1959). It was for Seeger that he wrote the classic, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face". The song was written at Seeger's request for a play she was in. He wrote it quickly and taught it to her by telephone. She was touring in the USA, but MacColl had been prevented from entering the US due to his Communist past. This song became a #1 hit for Roberta Flack in 1972; MacColl won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year for it, while Flack won the Record of the Year award for it.[3] In 1959, MacColl began releasing albums on Folkways Records, including several collaborative albums with Peggy Seeger. Amongst his other well-known songs is "Dirty Old Town", about his home town of Salford in Lancashire. It was written to cover an awkward scene change in his play "Landscape with Chimneys" (1949), but with the growing popularity of folk music the song became a standard part of many a singer's repertoire. Recordings include The Spinners (1964), Roger Whittaker (1968), The Dubliners (1968), Rod Stewart (1969), the Pogues (1985), The Mountain Goats (2002), Simple Minds (2003), Ted Leo and the Pharmacists (2003), and Frank Black (2006). Ewan MacColl became the main writer of English protest songs during the 1950s, with pro-communist songs such as The Ballad of Ho Chi Minh (which is well-known in Vietnam) and The Ballad of Stalin ("Joe Stalin was a mighty man and a mighty man was he/ He led the Soviet people on the road to victory"), as well as volatile protest and topical songs concerning the nuclear threat to peace, most notably 'Against the Atom Bomb' [4]. There was also "The Ballad of Tim Evans" (also known as "Go Down You Murderer") about an innocent man, Timothy Evans, executed for a crime he did not commit. [edit] RadioMacColl had been a radio actor since 1933. By the late thirties he was scripting as well. In 1957 producer Charles Parker asked MacColl to collaborate in the creation of a feature programme about the heroic death of train driver John Axon. Normal procedure would have been to use the recorded field interviews only as source for writing the script. MacColl produced a script that incorporated the actual voices and so created a new form that they called the radio ballad. Between 1957 and 1964, eight of these were broadcast by the BBC, all created by the team of MacColl and Parker together with Peggy Seeger who handled musical direction. MacColl wrote the scripts and the songs, as well as, with the others, collecting the field recordings which were the heart of the productions. [edit] SongwritingSeeger and MacColl recorded several albums of searing political commentary songs. MacColl himself wrote over 300 songs, some of which have been recorded by artists (in addition to those mentioned above) such as Planxty, The Dubliners, Dick Gaughan, The Clancy Brothers, Elvis Presley, Weddings Parties Anything, and Johnny Cash. In 2001, The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook was published, which includes the words and music to 200 of his songs. There is a plaque dedicated to MacColl in Russell Square in London. The inscription includes: "Presented by his communist friends 25.1.1990 ... Folk Laureate - Singer - Dramatist - Marxist ... in recognition of strength and singleness of purpose of this fighter for Peace and Socialism". In 1991 he was awarded a posthumous honorary degree by the University of Salford. His daughter from his second marriage, Kirsty MacColl, followed him into a musical career, albeit less traditionally. Kirsty MacColl was killed in an accident in Mexico in 2000. [edit] Later years
After many years of poor health(years in which MacColl nonetheless wrote, recorded and performed frequently) he died in October, 1989: the lifetime archive of his work with Peggy Seeger and others was passed on to Ruskin College at Oxford. [edit] Bibliography
[edit] DiscographySolo albums
Collaboration - A.L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl, accompanied by Steve Benbow
Collaborations - Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd
Collaboration - A.L. Lloyd, Ewan MacColl, Louis Killen, Ian Campbell, Cyril Tawney, Sam Larner and Harry H. Corbett
Collaboration - A.L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl
Collaboration - Bob and Ron Copper, Ewan MacColl, Isla Cameron, Seamus Ennis and Peter Kennedy
Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger
(* Not actually sung by MacColl and Seeger: this is an anthology of songs and tunes recorded by them) Ewan MacColl/ The Radio Ballads (1958 - 1964)(*)
(* Mixture of documentary, drama and song: broadcast on BBC radio) Singles
[edit] External links
[edit] References
Categories: British male singers | British folk musicians | British communists | British dramatists and playwrights | British record producers | Popular Theatre companies and practitioners | Communist Party of Great Britain members | Anglo-Scots | People from Broughton | 1915 births | 1989 deaths | Grammy Award winners | |||||||||||||||||||
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