Does it matter who claimed what Dick?
Somebody claimed that Killen put together Shoals of Herring from MacColl's fragmentary writing of it - you claim that Ian Campbell did.
As far as I am concerned, neither clam has the slightest basis in fact - MacColl wrote it and shortly afterwards recorded it for Folkways Records (New Briton Gazette)
MacColl's technique for making all his songs, for the Radio Ballads, fr the Irishmen, Romeo and Juliet, Before the Mast... all his media work, was to completely make the song complete and pass complete recordings to the singers who were to perform them.
I've just been listening to a recording of Joe Heaney singing MaColl's song, 'New Rocks of Bawn' for 'The Irishmen'.
Joe was given the song and asked to learn it, then perform it in two-verse sections, each section sung in a different key to suit the part of the film it was to be used in - absolutely brilliant.
You throw a hissy-fit about Killen being criticised for something someone (not me) has claimed that he said, but you have little compunction in taking snidey pops at a major performer whose contribution to our love and understanding of folk song is immesureable (and who has been dead for over twenty years).
Quite honestly, I'm tired of mediocre performers and folkie eccentrics working out their inadequacies on a twenty-year-old corpse - grave dancing at its most extreme.
Pat and I have just embarked on a project of producing 1, maybe 2 radio programmes outlining MacColl's work on singing.
I am staggered at the amount of information on his approach to singing and his aspirations for folk song has lain untouched and unconsidered, largely due to the barrier of garbage that has made discussion on his work virtually impossible.
MacColl is dead - let's see if he had anything valuable to say shall we?
Jim Carroll