"I think the time is ripe for a compilation CD of Ewan singing songs "not from his own culture"
No - no - no.
It seems to me ludicrous to suggest such an idea - isn't it time we let him RIP? There are enough ghouls still more than happy to give his corpse a kicking (if he hadn't been cremated).
He would have hated the idea, just as he would have been desperately unhappy at the lastest Topic venture of releasing selections from his and Bert's Riverside series of ballads, albums he couldn't bear to listen to.
To me, the use of Sixteen Tons on the Topic series is reminiscent of those dreadful'Before They Were Famous' series.
I only hope that when I pop my clogs people don't start digging up things I said and did thirty years ago.
If anybody wants to get Ewan at his best, try digging out his research on singing and putting them to use. There are loads of seminars he and Peggy did and 250 plus tapes of Critics Group workshops (housed in Birmingham Central Library) which, I have no doubt whatever, would give the present-day folk scene a much needed transfusion of life and ability.
Jim Carroll