The Virtual Rambler

Number forty two : 20^th November 2013

Ewan Don't Allow

Movements originating in the desire for greater freedom often develop a puritanical strain , warning that this , that and the other are strictly NOT allowed. Witness the Reformation. Inaugurated under the banner of liberty and revolt , it soon lapsed into the same degree of intransigence which it had accused its Catholic enemy of. This is a tendency particularly rife among left-wing factions and sects. People who have embraced a creed of universal justice for all - a creed from which they themselves may not draw any material advantage - surely that proves they are in the right ? The more right you are , the more obvious it becomes that everyone else should be bullied or persuaded into thinking likewise. There had been a revival of interest in ‘folk music’ in the later 1950s that resulted in the Newport Folk Festivals of the early 1960s. A number of self-elected arbiters of the genre drew up a roster of artists they felt to be genuine folk musicians and singers. Among this politburo of musical taste was Alan Lomax , a man with a long career as a folklorist , dogmatist and political activist. Introducing the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1965 , he made a patronising distinction between genuine , accoustic black bluesmen and these white boys with electric guitars. Their manager Albert Grossman accosted Lomax about his “chickenshit introduction” and these two large men were soon exchanging punches and verbal abuse to a blues accompaniment. Here was an allegorical portrait of the coming hostilities between the old guard folk-purists and a younger breed whose musical tastes included rock’n roll. Grossman was also Bob Dylan’s manager. Throughout the folk music world there would be denigrations and charges of heresy (if no actual Show Trials) among fraternities ostensibly marching together to the song “If I had a Hammer.”

Let us now examine the unsympathetic career of a man born James Henry Miller. An army deserter in 1940 , he re-emerged in 1945 as Ewan MacColl. His unrepentant , lifelong Communism survived revelations of both the Purges and the Gulags ; Budapest in the 1950s and Prague in the 1960s were to his closed mind 'capitalist-inspired' plots. Originally involved with left-wing theatricals (his first wife was Joan Littlewood) , he re-invented himself as a folk singer and songwriter , penning - and recording - The Ballad of Joe Stalin ( “He’s hammered out the future , the forgeman he has been / And he’s made the worker’s state the best the world has ever seen”). Clive James observed that “common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing , moving at different speeds. Those who lack humour are without judgement and should be trusted with nothing.” The gospel according to the laughably humourless MacColl was the music of the downtrodden peasants , miners , fishermen and labourers of our past. The unaccompanied voice was the purest form of its expression. He was a hey nonny no man , with the emphasis on the no , registering dismay when the purity of his hallowed tradition began to be contaminated by the commercial intrusions of 50s Skiffle. After the music's popularity had spread beyond its origins in the jazz clubs , the end result according to commissar MacColl , would be to render folk music indistinguishable from pop music. Here was a man with the assured knack of telling it like it isn’t.

After his series of Radio Ballads with the BBC , MacColl came to exert considerable influence on other folk singers’ careers. Earning his displeasure might preclude someone from making a TV appearance , or it could obstruct a projected concert tour. In the early 60s a number of young folk singers had begun writing songs of their own (just as MacColl himself had done). The staunch defender of ‘traditional’ folk music singled out Bob Dylan as the most pernicious agent of this subversion (“a mediocre charlatan with no lasting merit”) and some feel that MacColl (via his contacts in the trade unions) helped to orchestrate the systematic booing that followed Dylan round on his first “electric” tour of the UK in 1966. With a young Peggy Seeger (later his third wife) , MacColl opened a (folk) Singer's Club in London with the prescriptive policy that performers should only sing songs from their own regional background , as if traditional music was more of a further education class than a source of mere entertainment. In his own personal Kremlin he could exercise the dictatorial powers of the generalissimo himself. With his thin-lipped pieties , he auditioned potential singers before they were given the go-ahead to perform publicly , offered unsought critiques of their stage-manner or their material and told Shirley Collins that folk-singers didn’t wear nail varnish. All in all , a man for whom every question was always a closed question.


Wig

Archive

Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13^th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3^rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15^th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15^th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12^th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13^th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6^th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22^nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24^th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4^th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15^th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21^st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27^th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3^rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan and Charles Dickens, 8^th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16^th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 16^th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18^th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17^th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth of Sisyphus, 16^th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural History, 20^th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European Self Importance, 26^th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet Dreams, 25^th July 2012
Virtual rambler #27 – Excess, 17^th August 2012
Virtual rambler #28 – In Denial, 20^th September 2012
Virtual rambler #29 – The Way, 21^st October 2012
Virtual rambler #30 – On Rambling, 14^th November 2012
Virtual rambler #31 – Gazing Into The Abyss, 18^th December 2012
Virtual rambler #32 – Intellectual Gloom, 25^th January 2013
Virtual rambler #33 – Great Human Achievements, 20^th February 2013
Virtual rambler #34 – Autobiography, 20^th March 2013
Virtual rambler #35 – Your Good Health, 21^st April 2013
Virtual rambler #36 – Deconstruction, 20^th May 2013
Virtual rambler #37 – My Home Town, 19^th June 2013
Virtual rambler #38 – Ancient History, 21^st July 2013
Virtual rambler #39 – Possessions, 20^th August 2013
Virtual rambler #40 – Sporting Stoics, 20^th September 2013
Virtual rambler #41 – Free Time, 20^th October 2013
Virtual rambler #42 – Ewan Don't Allow, 20^th November 2013
Virtual rambler #43 – A Literary Nexus, 20^th December 2013
Virtual rambler #44 – Taking Liberties, 16^th January 2014
Virtual rambler #45 – More or Less, 20^th February 2014
Virtual rambler #46 – Under Control, 20^th March 2014
Virtual rambler #47 – Waiting, 20^th April 2014
Virtual rambler #48 – They Rose Without Trace, 20^th May 2014
Virtual rambler #49 – Bigger Impression , Smaller Footprint, 20^th June 2014
Virtual rambler #50 – Terpsichorean Instrumentations, 18^th July 2014
Virtual rambler #51 – Socially Mediated, 19^th August 2014
Virtual rambler #52 – Rambling Into The Sunset, 20^th September 2014