"If he had tried hard to explain his views on the tradition in a better way to a wider audience, his impact on the folk scene"
You're assuming he didn't try Vic - if what's happening thirty years after his death is anything to go by, the revival wasn't exactly a "listening bank".
MacColl actually had a considerable following both for his singing and for his ideas, about ten 'Critics type' workshops dotted around the country (I ran one in Manchester Terry Whelan ran one after I moved to London).
The old guard made pretty sure that the ideas that were coming from some of the policy clubs and workshops weren't taken seriously and even developed a launguage to make sure they weren't "purist", "finger-in-ear", "folk police"... still pretty much in currency.
A group of people, Bob Davenport, Terry Whelan and Harry Boardman among them, expressed some doubts with what was happening in the revival, approached Ewan and asked him to run classes - he refused, and instead, said he would be prepared to run a self-help group.
The Critics Group rn for nearly ten years and was disbanded as a Singers group in 1972, in order to form an acting group - which broke up in disarray a year later.
MacColl could have tried harder with his arguments, but he decided, why bother - I was was critical of his doing so - but the last couple of months trying to get people to even look at some of the work we did has pretty well brought me around to "why bother" - why talk to a wall when you can go and build your own house?
I know that the Group produced a totally unprecedented body of work on song - don't know anybody who came anywhere near to doing so.
And guess what - you still end up talking to that feckin' wall when you try to discuss it.
Discussion on MacColl, never get beyond the 'Arthur Two-Sheds' Jackson stage (present company sadly not excepted), discussions on 'what is folk song' are a no-go area and you have to send a scouting party out to find if a club advertising itself as "folk" actually caters for those of us who actually like and believe we know what a folk song is.
Household name or not, I have to admit, beyond a handful of recordings I heard and wasn't particularly impressed by, I wouldn't have put myself too far out to listen to Jeremy Taylor and wouldn't have been able to single him out from so many others on the part of the folk scene I wasn't involved in - busy days back then.
Jim Carroll