MacColl once said that not long after he started to sing ballads at clubs, if it was a particularly long ballad, he would sing one half of it in the first half of the evening, the rest of it in the second half (he mentioned Gil Morice in particular).
He did this for some time until an audience member asked him why he did it like that He stopped doing it after that and put it down to his own lack of confidence , rather than the audiences' "not being ready for it."
Jim Carroll