Ewan MacColl was quite well known in the United States. My first acquaintance with his singing was in a class I took in the University of Washington, English Department, "The Popular Ballad," taught by Dr. David C. Fowler. Dr. Fowler played many cuts from a set of several records of traditional ballads sung by Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd by way of examples of ballads we were studying. A couple of years later, I met Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger at the 1960 Berkeley Folk Festival.

Songbooks compiled by MacColl, such "The Shuttle and The Cage" and another similar book he did, plus "The Singing Island" put together by MacColl and Peggy Seeger were big sellers in this area.

There were darned few folk music enthusiasts whom I knew, whose interest went deeper than the Kingston Trio, New Christy Minstrel level, who did not know who Ewan MacColl was.

Don Firth