Ewan MacColl was born on January 25, 1915 and his centenary has been celebrated throughout the year. In November, there will be a special concert called Blood and Roses: The Songs of Ewan MacColl at London's Barbican and other UK venues (featuring guests such as Peggy Seeger, Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson, Eliza Carthy, Rachel & Becky Unthank), which follows a tribute at Celtic Connections concert in January that featured Jarvis co*cker. In April, MacColl was nducted into the Hall of Fameat the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
MacColl, who died aged 74 in 1989, worked with some of the most celebrated cultural figures of the 20th century, including George Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey, Igor Stravinsky, Billie Holiday, Marilyn Monroe, Ingmar Bergman and Brendan Behan. He recorded and produced more than one hundred albums and wrote some of the finest ballads in English folk history.
It is a hard task selecting his best songs from such a vast catalogue, but here are my 11 favourites:
11: SCHOOLDAYS END (1960)
Ewan MacColl was a chronicler of times and this wistful song, from The Big Hewer, an album about starting a coal miner's life, captures the end of childhood. 'Schooldays over, come on then John, Time you were getting your pit boots on. On with your sark and moleskin trousers, Time you were on your way, Time you were learning the pit man's job, And earning a pit man's pay.'
Best cover version: Dick Guaghan
10: GREEN ISLAND (1990)
A good example of the late and great Ewan MacColl's songwriting, Green Island appeared on his Naming of Names album, recorded with third wife and long-time collaborator Peggy Seeger. MacColl said of the song: "In the late Eighties, I've been developing a more lyrical approach to political songs. The Island was one song in this new vein of ideas." Includes the splendid line: "No force on earth can ever trap the wind that shakes the barley."
Best cover version: Christy Moore
9: THE MANCHESTER RAMBLER (1932)
In the Thirties, rambling was a mass sport of working-class youngsters and the song is about the draconian laws that restricted public access to the British countryside. The Manchester Rambler achieved widespread popularity long before its first radio transmission because of the way oral transmission of folk songs worked. MacColl said he even met a young geologist in Canada who had heard people singing it in a logging camp in the Fraser River long before it was recorded.
Best cover version: The Dubliners
8: THE FATHER'S SONG (1968)
"I had been a song-carrier since early childhood, listening to my father's splendid voice and artistry," said Ewan MacColl. His own daughter, the late Kirsty MacColl, was an excellent musician and his sons Calum and Neill are both successful musicians. Four of MacColl’s grandsons – Jamie MacColl (Bombay Bicycle Club), Harry Mead (Klangkarussell), Alex MacColl and Tom MacColl – will perform in his memory at the special Glasgow concert. This song is a touching and powerful advice song from a father to his child. A new version of The Father's Song from Martin Simpson appears on a new tribute album to MacColl called Joy of Living.
Best cover version: Dick Gaughan
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7: JAMIE FOYERS (1966)
Jamie Foyers is a moving ballad about a shipyard worker from the Clyde who goes to fight with the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and is killed at Gandesa. 'He was grand at the fitbaa/at the dance he was braw/Young Jamie Foyers/was the flouer o thaim aall.'
Best cover version: Dick Gaughan
6: MOVING ON SONG (1964)
Moving On Song was written for The Travelling People edition of Ewan MacColl's Radio Ballads series and which depicts travellers being evicted unceremoniously. Maddy Prior told me that she prefers his personal and emotional songs to his political ones – and the idiotic Ballad of Joseph Stalin is certainly one best forgotten – but Moving On Song is one of his best pieces of social commentary (along with The Ballad of Tim Evans and Companeros).
Best cover version: Dave Burland
5: SHOALS OF HERRING (1959)
Probably the best-known song from the Radio Ballads series, this is from Singing the Fishing (1959) and was based on the life of Sam Larner, a fisherman and singer from Norfolk. The song became a staple in the repertoires of Sixties groups such as The Spinners and was featured on the soundtrack for the 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis, performed by Oscar Isaac.
Best cover version: Martin Carthy
4: SWEET THAMES, FLOW SOFTLY (1968)
A glorious 15-verse poem/song about heartbreak, which MacColl said was partly inspired by the line in Mary Poppins, "I shall stay until the wind changes." The lovers begin in joy at Woolwich Pier but alas the tide turns for them.
Best cover version: Christy Moore
3: BALLAD OF ACCOUNTING (1964)
An angry and stirring life advice song. 'What did you learn in the morning?/How much did you know in the afternoon?/Were you content in the evening?'
Best cover version: Karen Casey
2: THE FIRST TIME EVER I SAW YOUR FACE (1958)
The song that beat Don McClean's American Pie to best Grammy song of 1973. It had been a massive No1 for Roberta Flack in 1972, 15 years after MacColl had written it for Peggy Seeger. His wife had rung him from America and asked for a song to put in a theatrical production. Within an hour he had composed the song and telephoned her to sing it to her. The song was later recorded by Elvis Presley and used in the 1972 Clint Eastwood film Play Misty For Me. In his 1990 autobiography Journeyman, MacColl said: "It wasn't until Roberta Flack recorded her soul version of the song that I became aware of having written a commercially successful 'hit'. At first I didn't realise just how successful it was. A friend happened to mention that he'd heard it sung in a pop music programme on the radio, I was unimpressed and continued to be unimpressed. I was in my mid-Fifties and had lived hand to mouth for almost all of my life. I'm not sure fame and fortune ever figured in any of my dreams."
Best cover version: Roberta Flack
1: DIRTY OLD TOWN (1956)
Salford-born Ewan MacColl's song about the industrial town in which he was born. It's full of vivid and stark images such as "I saw a train set the night on fire" (the sparks and smoke from steam trains used to come up through vents in tunnels and billow out into the night). Salford council tried to get him to change some of the lyrics. A masterpiece.
Best cover version: The Pogues
