The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #167887   Message #4053330
Posted By: Jim Carroll
18-May-20 - 12:12 PM
Thread Name: Critical discussion of Ewan MacColl's singing
Subject: RE: Critical discussion of Ewan's singing
Sorry prem. ejac. again - the 'find' button is too near the 'send one - what I triied to end with is this;

MacColl had been out busking for pennies by the Manchester theatres and cinemas. The songs he sang were unusual, Scots songs, Gaelic songs he had learnt from his mother, border ballads and folk-songs. One night while queueing up for the three-and- sixpennies, Kenneth Adam had heard him singing outside the Manchester Paramount. He was suitably impressed. Not only did he give MacColl a handout; he also advised him to go and audi¬tion for Archie Harding at the BBC studios in Manchester’s Piccadilly. This MacColl duly did. May Day in England was being cast at the time, and though it had no part for a singer, it certainly had for a good, tough, angry Voice of the People. Ewan MacColl became the Voice, a role which he has continued to fill on stage, on the air, and on a couple of hundred L.P. discs ever since.
Jim