Born in England to Scottish parents, he is known as one of the instigators of the 1960s folk revival as well as for writing such songs as "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Dirty Old Town".

[2] MacColl collected hundreds of traditional folk songs,[3] including the version of "Scarborough Fair" later popularised by Simon & Garfunkel,[4][5] and released dozens of albums with A.L.

William Miller was an iron moulder and trade unionist who had moved to Salford with his wife, a charwoman, to look for work after being blacklisted in almost every foundry in Scotland.

[7] He left school in 1930 after an elementary education, during the Great Depression and, joining the ranks of the unemployed, began a lifelong programme of self-education whilst keeping warm in Manchester Central Library.

He began his career as a writer helping produce and contributing humorous verse and skits to some of the Communist Party's factory papers.

[13] In 1932 the British intelligence service, MI5, opened a file on MacColl, after local police asserted that he was "a communist with very extreme views" who needed "special attention".

[15] He was married three times: to theatre director Joan Littlewood (1914–2002) from 1934 to 1948; to Jean Mary Newlove (1923–2017) from 1949 to 1974,[16] with whom he had two children, a son Hamish (1950–2024), and a daughter, the singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl (1959–2000); and to American folksinger Peggy Seeger (b.

[17] Allan Moore and Giovanni Vacca wrote that MacColl had been subject to Special Observation whilst in the King's Regiment, owing to his political views, and that the records show that, rather than being discharged, he was declared a deserter on 18 December 1940.

Inspired by the example of Alan Lomax, who had arrived in Britain and Ireland in 1950, and had done extensive fieldwork there, MacColl also began to collect and perform traditional ballads.

[citation needed] In 1947, MacColl visited a retired lead-miner named Mark Anderson (1874–1953) in Middleton-in-Teesdale, County Durham, England, who performed to him a song called "Scarborough Fair"; MacColl recorded the lyrics and melody in a book of Teesdale folk songs, and later included it on his and Peggy Seeger's The Singing Island (1960).

[21] Over the years MacColl recorded and produced upwards of a hundred albums, many with English folk song collector and singer A. L. Lloyd.

[22] In 1956, MacColl caused a scandal when he fell in love with 21-year-old Peggy Seeger, who had come to Britain to transcribe the music for Alan Lomax's anthology Folk Songs of North America (published in 1961).

MacColl himself wrote over 300 songs, some of which have been recorded by artists (in addition to those mentioned above) such as Planxty, the Dubliners, Dick Gaughan, Phil Ochs, the Clancy Brothers, Elvis Presley, Weddings Parties Anything, The Pogues and Johnny Cash.

[a 1] It went on to become a folk-revival staple and was recorded by the Spinners (1964), Donovan (1964), Roger Whittaker (1968), Julie Felix (1968), the Dubliners (1968), Rod Stewart (1969), the Clancy Brothers (1970), the Pogues (1985), the Mountain Goats (2002), Simple Minds (2003), Ted Leo and the Pharmacists (2003), Frank Black (2006) and Bettye LaVette (2012).

MacColl's song "The Shoals of Herring", based on the life of Norfolk fisherman and folk singer Sam Larner was recorded by the Dubliners, the Clancy Brothers, the Corries and more.

Ewan has a short biography of his work in the accompanying book of the Topic Records 70-year anniversary boxed set Three Score and Ten.

[26]: 11  Five of his recordings, three of them solo, appear in the boxed set: MacColl was one of the main composers of British protest songs during the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1957 producer Charles Parker asked MacColl to collaborate in the creation of a feature programme about the heroic death of train driver John Axon.

The initial aim of improving musical skills soon broadened to performing at political events, the Singers' Club where MacColl, Seeger and Lloyd were featured artists and theatre productions.

[clarification needed] Members who became performing folk singers in their own right included Frankie Armstrong, John Faulkner, Sandra Kerr, Dennis Turner, Terry Yarnell, Bob Blair, Jim Carroll, Brian Pearson and Jack Warshaw.

Other members, including Michael Rosen, joined primarily for theatre productions, the Festival of Fools, a political review of the previous year.

The offshoot group became Combine Theatre, with a club of their own mixing traditional and original folksongs and theatrical performances based on contemporary events, into the 1980s.

[35]Ewan wrote a number of songs like this in his early years, alongside more subtle texts like "Dirty Old Town" and "Stalinvarosh."

Idolisation of Stalin by the left wing the world over continued until the 20th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (1956), when he was posthumously denounced by Khrushchev for his "personality cult" and his human rights crimes.