Yeah, it was classed as a joint piece of work in many listings. A bit like Lennon / McCartney when Paul McCartney feels he wrote some of them solely.

I wasn't waving a flag for McColl, just interested to read nothing about his involvement with the song earlier in the thread. I am sure it was a joint effort. Many of McColl's songs were joint efforts even where Seeger was not credited. As a rule, he worried about the words, she the music. I have no idea if this was the case with this song. I am willing to be corrected in any case.

McColl did have many ideas about doing a song about Creswell. Back in the late '70s I did a monthly folk radio show that was syndicated to hospital radio stations around the country and used to interview people as part of it. McColl asked me questions during a tea break about myself and when I said I am originally a Creswell lad, he told me of his half finished song many years ago, some of the lines then appearing in Ballad of Springhill. He then mentioned the Cresford song and how songs can evolve through amalgams. A pity that conversation was not recorded, it was more interesting than some of the microphone work..

Many of the people who died in the Creswell disaster were from Clowne, 3 miles up the road. This was mainly because shifts were based, as well as could be organised, on geography to ease transport considerations. I did not have any close relatives killed. One interesting family fact was how cold logic dictated events though. Because my mum had just lost a young son, (a brother I never knew, as I was not born then) somebody said my mum was used to grief (!) nad was asked to be the one who took women out of the canteen to a smaller room and told them the bad news. During that night, my mum told over 50 of the 70 mums and wives bad news. Weeks after burying her own son. This seemed a good idea to the management and authorities...

Sorry, digressing. Just that Dennis the Elder asked about the Creswell disaster.

I don't sing songs about mining disasters. I am an ex miner and thought it asking for trouble at the time, and then my son went down the pit. He left last year, but still, leave such songs to others.