The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #143527 Message #3632918
Posted By: Jim Carroll
14-Jun-14 - 08:43 AM
Thread Name: Origins: First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
Subject: RE: Origins: First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
The origin of the song Peggy was on tour in America - Ewan had been refused a visa. She phoned Ewan and during the conversation she said she needed a contemporary love song. Ewan made it on the spot and she use it on the tour. This is the note to it from the Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook
"THE FIRST TIME EVER I SAW YOUR FACE (1957) You can sweat blood over a song, writing and rewriting for weeks and even then it may or may not turn out right. On the other hand, you can sit down and write a song in half an hour or even shorter. This song was made in the course of a transatlantic telephone call to Peggy, who was in Los Angeles at the time. It took all of seven or eight minutes to complete and was never rewritten. Peggy sang it from a typed text that same evening and has gone on singing it for the last twenty-seven years. Scores of other singers have recorded it, but only Peggy's singing matches the feelings that gave rise to it. Ewan Mac Coll" That he 'stole' any songs provide a great deal of entertainment for those of us lucky enough to have known and worked with him. This particular Finn MacColl Cycle of legends includes, 'Shoals of Herring', which he 'stole' off Sam Larner and all the Travellers' songs which he 'nicked' off - well - the Travellers in general. MacColl's tunes are mostly traceable - many of them of that time were adapted from Irish traditional ones - I think I worked out where he got 'First Time' from - can't remember the title, but I suspect it's one of Joe Heaney's. He once described Presley's version as sounding like "a bloke shouting up a serenade to his bird living on the top floor of a ten storey block of flats". Jim Carroll