Ewan MacColl


James Henry Miller, better known by his stage name Ewan MacColl, was a British folk singer-songwriter, folk song collector, labour activist and actor. Born in England to Scottish parents, he was one of the originators of the 1960s folk revival and wrote such songs as "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Dirty Old Town".
MacColl collected hundreds of traditional folk songs including the version of "Scarborough Fair" later popularised by Simon & Garfunkel, and released dozens of albums with A.L. Lloyd, Peggy Seeger and others, mostly of traditional folk songs. He also wrote many left-wing political songs, remaining a steadfast communist throughout his life and actively engaging in political activism.

Early life and early career

MacColl was born as James Henry Miller at 4 Andrew Street, in Broughton, Salford, England, on 25 January 1915 to Scottish parents, William Miller and Betsy, both socialists. William Miller was an iron moulder and trade unionist who had moved to Salford with his wife, a charwoman, to look for work after being blacklisted in almost every foundry in Scotland. Betsy Miller knew many traditional folk songs such as "Lord Randall" and "My Bonnie Laddie's Lang A-growing", of which her son later created written and audio recordings; he later recorded an album of traditional songs with her.
James Miller was the youngest and only surviving child in the family of three sons and one daughter. They lived amongst a group of Scots and Jimmy 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. He was educated at Grecian Street School, Salford, England. He left school in 1930 after an elementary education, during the Great Depression and, joining the ranks of the unemployed, began a lifelong programme of self-education whilst keeping warm in Manchester Central Library. During this period he found intermittent work in a number of jobs and also made money as a street singer.
He joined the Young Communist League and a 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 just after mass trespass of Kinder Scout. He was responsible for publicity in the planning of the trespass.
In 1932 the British intelligence service, MI5, opened a file on MacColl, after local police asserted that he was "a communist with very extreme views" who needed "special attention". For a time the Special Branch kept a watch on the Manchester home that he shared with his first wife, Joan Littlewood. MI5 caused some of MacColl's songs to be rejected by the BBC, and prevented the employment of Littlewood as a BBC children's programme presenter.

Personal life

He was married three times: to theatre director Joan Littlewood from 1934 to 1948; to Jean Mary Newlove from 1949 to 1974, with whom he had two children, a son Hamish, and a daughter, the singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl ; and to American folksinger Peggy Seeger from 1977 until his death in 1989, with whom he had three children, Neill, Calum, and Kitty. He collaborated with Littlewood in the theatre, and with Seeger in folk music.

Acting career

In 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 MacColl's wife and work partner. In 1936, after a failed attempt to move to London, the couple returned to Manchester, and formed the Theatre Union. In 1940 a performance of The Last Edition – a 'living newspaper' – was halted by the police and MacColl 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. In an interview in June 1987, he said that he was expelled for "anti-fascist activity". Allan Moore and Giovanni Vacca wrote that MacColl had been subject to Special Observation whilst in the King's Regiment, owing to his political views, and that the records show that, rather than being discharged, he was declared a deserter on 18 December 1940.
In 1946, members of Theatre Union and others formed Theatre Workshop and spent the next few years touring, mostly in the north of England. In 1945, Miller changed his name to Ewan MacColl.
In the 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 the Theatre Union now were refined, producing the distinctive form of theatre that 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.

Music

Traditional music

During this period MacColl's enthusiasm for folk music grew. Inspired by the example of Alan Lomax, who had arrived in Britain and Ireland in 1950, and had done extensive fieldwork there, MacColl also began to collect and perform traditional ballads. His long involvement with Topic Records started in 1950 with his release of a single, "The Asphalter's Song", on that label. When, in 1953 Theatre Workshop decided to move to Stratford, London, MacColl, who had opposed that move, left the company and changed the focus of his career from acting and playwriting to singing and composing folk and topical songs.
In 1947, MacColl visited a retired lead-miner named Mark Anderson in Middleton-in-Teesdale, County Durham, England, who performed to him a song called "Scarborough Fair"; MacColl recorded the lyrics and melody in a book of Teesdale folk songs, and later included it on his and Peggy Seeger's The Singing Island. Martin Carthy learnt the song from MacColl's book, before teaching it to Paul Simon; Simon & Garfunkel released the song as "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" on their album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, popularising the obscure and unique folk tune. Ewan MacColl, a decade after collecting the song, released his own version accompanied by Peggy Seeger on guitar in 1957 on the LP "Matching Songs of the British Isles and America" and an a capella rendition another decade later on "The Long Harvest".
Over the years MacColl recorded and produced upwards of a hundred albums, many with English folk song collector and singer A. L. Lloyd. The pair released an ambitious series of eight LP albums of some 70 of the 305 Child Ballads. MacColl produced a number of LPs with Irish singer songwriter Dominic Behan, a brother of Irish playwright Brendan Behan.
In 1956, MacColl caused a scandal when he fell in love with 21-year-old Peggy Seeger, who had come to Britain to transcribe the music for Alan Lomax's anthology Folk Songs of North America. At the time MacColl, who was twenty years older than Peggy, was still married to his second wife.

Singer-songwriter

Seeger and MacColl recorded several albums of searing political commentary songs. MacColl himself wrote over 300 songs, some of which have been recorded by artists such as Planxty, the Dubliners, Dick Gaughan, Phil Ochs, the Clancy Brothers, Elvis Presley, Weddings Parties Anything, The Pogues and Johnny Cash. In 2001, The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook was published, which includes the words and music to 200 of his songs. Dick Gaughan, Dave Burland and Tony Capstick collaborated in The Songs of Ewan MacColl.
Many of MacColl's best-known songs were written for the theatre. For example, he wrote "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" very quickly at the request of Seeger, who needed it for use in a play she was appearing in. He taught it to her by long-distance telephone while she was on tour in the United States. Seeger said that MacColl used to send her tapes to listen to whilst they were apart and that the song was on one of them. This song, which was recorded by Roberta Flack for her debut album, First Take, issued by Atlantic records in June 1969, became a No. 1 hit in 1972 and won MacColl a Grammy Award for Song of the Year, while Flack received a Grammy Award for Record of the Year.
In 1959, MacColl began releasing LP albums on Folkways Records, including several collaborative albums with Peggy Seeger. His song "Dirty Old Town", inspired by his home town of Salford in Lancashire, was written for the play Landscape with Chimneys produced by Joan Littlewood and Theatre Workshop. It went on to become a folk-revival staple and was recorded by the Spinners, Donovan, Roger Whittaker, Julie Felix, the Dubliners, Rod Stewart, the Clancy Brothers, the Pogues, the Mountain Goats, Simple Minds, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Frank Black and Bettye LaVette.
MacColl's song "The Shoals of Herring", based on the life of Norfolk fisherman and folk singer Sam Larner was recorded by the Dubliners, the Clancy Brothers, the Corries and more. Other popular songs written and performed by MacColl include "The Manchester Rambler", "The Moving-On Song" and "The Joy of Living".
Ewan has a short biography of his work in the accompanying book of the Topic Records 70-year anniversary boxed set Three Score and Ten. Five of his recordings, three of them solo, appear in the boxed set:
  • on CD #4:
  • * track 2, "Come All Ye Fisher Lads", with the Fisher Family, from their album The Fisher Family.
  • on CD #5:
  • *track 4, "Go Down You Murderers", from Chorus from the Gallows
  • on CD #6:
  • *track 9, "To the Begging I Will Go", from Manchester Angel
  • *track 14, "Sixteen Tons", with Brian Daly, from the single Sixteen Tons/The Swan Necked Valve
  • * track 18, Dirty Old Town, from the single Dirty Old Town/Sheffield Apprentice.