James Henry Miller (25 January 1915 – 22 October 1989), 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. to Scottish parents, William Miller and Betsy (née Henry), 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 (one of each sex was stillborn and one son died at the age of four). 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 (see: "Christmas tree" files).

Personal life

He was married three times: to theatre director Joan Littlewood (1914–2002) from 1934 to 1948; to Jean Mary Newlove (1923–2017) from 1949 to 1974, with whom he had two children, a son Hamish (1950–2024), and a daughter, the singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl (1959–2000); and to American folksinger Peggy Seeger (b. 1935) from 1977 until his death in 1989, with whom he had three children, Neill, Calum, and Kitty. 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. and that he announced his change of name when she greeted him back at Manchester railway station. Littlewood also wrote that, when they were performing a play about military desertion after the war in Ormesby (close to where he had been stationed), MacColl was briefly arrested, after being recognised locally, and moved to an army detention barracks at Northallerton before being released after a few days.

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 (influenced by the Lallans movement in Scotland). and an a capella rendition another decade later on "The Long Harvest" (1967).

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 (published in 1961). 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 (in addition to those mentioned above) 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 (1978; 1985).

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 (from where MacColl had been barred because of his Communist past). 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 (1949) produced by Joan Littlewood and Theatre Workshop. It went on to become a folk-revival staple and was recorded by the Spinners (1964), Donovan (1964), Roger Whittaker (1968), Julie Felix (1968), the Dubliners (1968), Rod Stewart (1969), the Clancy Brothers (1970), the Pogues (1985), the Mountain Goats (2002), Simple Minds (2003), Ted Leo and the Pharmacists (2003), Frank Black (2006) and Bettye LaVette (2012).

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.

Political songs

MacColl was one of the main composers of British protest songs during the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. In the early 1950s he penned "The Ballad of Ho Chi Minh" and "The Ballad of Stalin" for the British Communist Party.

<blockquote><poem>

Joe Stalin was a mighty man and a mighty man was he

He led the Soviet people on the road to victory.

All through the revolution he fought at Lenin's side,

And they made a combination till the day that Lenin died.

</poem></blockquote>

<!-- MacColl soon became ashamed of this and it was never reissued. -->When asked about the song in a 1985 interview, he said that it was "a very good song" and that "it dealt with some of the positive things that Stalin did". In 1992, after his death, Peggy Seeger included it as an annex in her Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook, saying that she had originally planned to exclude the song on the grounds that Ewan would not have wanted it included, but decided to include it as an example of his work in his early career. The B-side of the record, Sovietland (Land of Freedom) was not included in the songbook.

MacColl sang and composed numerous protest and topical songs for the nuclear disarmament movement, for example "Against the Atom Bomb", The Vandals, Nightmare, and Nuclear Means Jobs.

He wrote "The Ballad of Tim Evans" (also known as "Go Down You Murderer") a song protesting against capital punishment, based on an infamous murder case in which an innocent man, Timothy Evans, was condemned and executed, before the real culprit was discovered.

MacColl was very active during the miners' strike of 1984–85 in distributing free cassettes of songs supportive of the National Union of Mineworkers, entitled Daddy, what did you do in the strike? The title song was unusually aggressive in its language towards the strikebreakers. This collection was only released on cassette and remaining copies are rare, but some of the less aggressive songs have featured on other compilations. At MacColl's 70th birthday party, he was presented by Arthur Scargill with a miner's lamp to show appreciation for his support. He stated that he had been a member of the Communist Party but left because he felt that the Soviet Union was "not communist or socialist enough".

In 2025, punk band Dropkick Murphys along with guest Billy Bragg covered MacColl's song "School Days Are Over" on their album For the People. The song is a favorite of Bragg's.

Bibliography

  • Goorney, Howard and MacColl, Ewan (eds.) (1986) Agit-Prop to Theatre Workshop, Political Playscripts, 1930–1950. Manchester: Manchester University Press
  • Harker, Ben (2007) Class Act: the Cultural and Political Life of Ewan MacColl. London: Pluto Press (chapters: 1. Lower Broughton—2. Red Haze—3. Welcome, Comrade—4. Browned Off—5. A Richer, Fuller Life—6. Towards a People's Culture—7. Croydon, Soho, Moscow, Paris—8. Bard of Beckenham—9. Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom—10. Sanctuary—11. Endgame)
  • Littlewood, Joan (1994) Joan's Book: Joan Littlewood's Peculiar History As She Tells It. London: Methuen
  • MacColl, Ewan (1963) Ewan MacColl- Peggy Seeger Songbook. New York: Oak Publications, Inc Library of Congress Card Number, 63-14092
  • MacColl, Ewan (1990) Journeyman: an Autobiography; introduction by Peggy Seeger. London: Sidgwick & Jackson
  • MacColl, Ewan (1998) The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook: sixty years of songmaking; ed. Peggy Seeger. New York: Oak Publications
  • Myer, Michael Grosvenor (1972): The Radio Ballads Revisited, Folk Review magazine, September 1972
  • O'Brien, Karen (2004) Kirsty MacColl, The One and Only: the definitive biography . London: Andre Deutsch.
  • Pegg, Carole A. (1999) British Traditional and Folk Musics, in: British Journal of Ethnomusicology, vol. 7, pp.&nbsp;193–98
  • Samuel, Raphael; MacColl, Ewan; and Cosgrove, Stuart (1985) Theatres of the Left, 1880–1935: Workers' Theatre Movements in Britain and America. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
  • Vacca, Giovanni and Moore, Allan F. (2014) Legacies of Ewan MacColl&nbsp;– The Last Interview. Farnham: Ashgate.

Discography

;Solo albums

  • Scots Street Songs (1956)
  • Shuttle and Cage (1957)
  • Barrack Room Ballads (1958)
  • Still I Love Him (1958)
  • Bad Lads and Hard Cases (1959)
  • Songs of Robert Burns (1959)
  • Haul on the Bowlin(1961)
  • The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Child Ballads) (1961)
  • Broadside Ballads, vols 1 and 2 (1962)
  • Off to Sea Once More (1963)
  • Four Pence a Day (1963)
  • British Industrial Folk songs (1963)
  • Bundook Ballads (1967)
  • The Wanton Muse (1968)
  • Paper Stage 1 (1969)
  • Paper Stage 2 (1969)
  • Solo Flight (1972)

;Collaboration&nbsp;– Bob and Ron Copper, Ewan MacColl, Isla Cameron, Seamus Ennis and Peter Kennedy

  • As I Roved Out (1953–54)

;Collaboration&nbsp;– A. L. Lloyd, Ewan MacColl, Louis Killen, Ian Campbell, Cyril Tawney, Sam Larner and Harry H. Corbett

  • Blow the Man Down (EP) (1956)

;Collaboration&nbsp;– with A. L. Lloyd

  • A Hundred Years Ago (EP) (1956)
  • The Coast of Peru (EP) (1956)
  • The Singing Sailor (1956)
  • The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (The Child Ballads) Vol 1 (1956)
  • The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (The Child Ballads) Vol 2 (1956)
  • The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (The Child Ballads) Vol 3 (1956)
  • The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (The Child Ballads) Vol 4 (1956)
  • The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (The Child Ballads) Vol 5 (1956)
  • Gamblers and Sporting Blades (E.P.) (1962) (accompanied by Steve Benbow)
  • Bold Sportsmen All: Gamblers & Sporting Blades (1962, with Roy Harris)
  • English and Scottish Folk Ballads (1964)
  • A Sailor's Garland (1966)
  • Blow Boys Blow (1967)

;Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger

  • Matching Songs of the British Isles and America (1957)
  • Bless 'Em All and other British Soldier's Songs (1957)
  • Second Shift&nbsp;– Industrial Ballads (1958)
  • Chorus From The Gallows (1960)
  • Popular Scottish Songs (1960)
  • New Briton Gazette, Vol. 1 (1960)
  • Songs Against the Bomb (1960)
  • Classic Scots Ballads (1961)
  • Bothy Ballads of Scotland (1961)
  • Two Way Trip (1961)
  • New Briton Gazette, Vol. 2 (1962)
  • Jacobite Songs&nbsp;– The Two Rebellions 1715 and 1745 (1962)
  • Steam Whistle Ballads (1964)
  • Traditional Songs and Ballads (1964)
  • The Amorous Muse (1966)
  • The Manchester Angel (1966)
  • The Long Harvest 1 (1966)
  • The Long Harvest 2 (1967)
  • The Long Harvest 3 (1968)
  • The Angry Muse (1968)
  • The Long Harvest 4 (1969)
  • The Long Harvest 5 (1970)
  • The World Of Ewan MacColl And Peggy Seeger (1970)
  • The Long Harvest 6 (1971)
  • The Long Harvest 7 (1972)
  • The World Of Ewan MacColl And Peggy Seeger Vol. 2 – Songs from Radio Ballads (1972)
  • At The Present Moment (1972)
  • Folkways Record of Contemporary Songs (1973)
  • The Long Harvest 8 (1973)
  • The Long Harvest 9 (1974)
  • The Long Harvest 10 (1975)
  • Saturday Night at The Bull and Mouth (1977)
  • Cold Snap (1977)
  • Hot Blast (1978)
  • Blood and Roses (1979)
  • Kilroy Was Here (1980)
  • Blood and Roses 2 (1981)
  • Blood and Roses 3 (1982)
  • Blood and Roses 4 (1982)
  • Blood and Roses 5 (1983)
  • Freeborn Man (1983) [reissued 1989]
  • Daddy, What did You Do in The Strike? (1984) [cassette mini-album]
  • White Wind, Black Tide&nbsp;– Anti-Apartheid Songs (1986) [cassette album]
  • Items of News (1986)

;Ewan MacColl/The Radio Ballads (1958–1964)*

  • Ballad of John Axon (1958)
  • Song of a Road (1959)
  • Singing The Fishing (1960)
  • The Big Hewer (1961)
  • The Body Blow (1962)
  • On The Edge (1963)
  • The Fight Game (1964)
  • The Travelling People (1964)

(* Mixture of documentary, drama and song: broadcast on BBC radio)

;Singles

  • "Van Dieman's Land" / "Lord Randall"
  • "Sir Patrick Spens" / "Eppie Morrie"
  • "Parliamentary Polka" / "Song of Choice"
  • "Housewife's Alphabet" / "My Son"
  • "The Shoals of Herring"

;Posthumous compilations

  • Naming of Names (1990) (LP/CD)
  • Black and White (1991) (CD)

;Compilation appearances

  • The Unfortunate Rake (1960)
  • The Iron Muse (1993) (CD)
  • It Was Mighty – The Early Days of Irish Music in London (2016) from Topic Records includes a number of recordings made by MacColl

Quotation

Notes

References

  • Ewan MacColl Official Website
  • Ewan MacColl 1915–1989 A Political Journey (From the Working Class Movement Library site)
  • Ewan MacColl/Peggy Seeger discography
  • Farber, Jim "Ewan MacColl, dogmatist of British folk, gets a tribute album"; New York Times; 28 October 2015