Эван Макколл: Жизнь и творчество английского барда.

English folk singer songwriter (1915–1989)

James Henry Miller (25 January 1915 – 22 October 1989), better known by his stage name Ewan MacColl, was an English folk singer songwriter, folk song collector, labour activist and actor. 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". MacColl collected hundreds of traditional folk songs, including the version of "Scarborough Fair" later popularised by Simon & Garfunkel, and released dozens of albums with A. L. Lloyd, Peggy Seeger and others, mostly of traditional folk songs. to Scottish parents, William Miller and Betsy (née Henry), both socialists. 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. Betsy Miller knew many traditional folk songs such as "Lord Randall" and "My Bonnie Laddie's Lang A growing", of which her son later created written and audio recordings; he later recorded an album of traditional songs with her. James Miller was the youngest and only surviving child in the family of three sons and one daughter (one of each sex was stillborn and one son died at the age of four). They lived amongst a group of Scots and Jimmy was brought up in an atmosphere of fierce political debate interspersed with the large repertoire of songs and stories his parents had brought from Scotland. He was educated at North Grecian Street Junior School in Broughton. 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. During this period he found intermittent work in a number of jobs and also made money as a street singer. and a socialist amateur theatre troupe, the Clarion Players. He began his career as a writer helping produce and contributing humorous verse and skits to some of the Communist Party's factory papers. He was an activist in the unemployed workers' campaigns and the mass trespasses of the early 1930s. One of his best known songs, "The Manchester Rambler", was written just before the pivotal mass trespass of Kinder Scout. He was responsible for publicity in the planning of the trespass. 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". For a time the Special Branch kept a watch on the Manchester home that he shared with his first wife, Joan Littlewood. MI5 caused some of MacColl's songs to be rejected by the BBC, and prevented the employment of Littlewood as a BBC children's programme presenter (see: "Christmas tree" files).

He was married three times: to theatre director Joan Littlewood (1914–2002) from 1934 to 1950; to Jean Mary Newlove (1923–2017) in 1949, with whom he had two children, a son Hamish (b. 1950), and a daughter, the singer songwriter Kirsty MacColl (1959–2000); and to American folksinger Peggy Seeger (b. 1935) in 1977, with whom he had three children, Neill, Calum, and Kitty. He collaborated with Littlewood in the theatre, and with Seeger in folk music.

In 1931, with other unemployed members of the Clarion Players he formed an agit prop theatre group, the "Red Megaphones". During 1934 they changed the name to "Theatre of Action" and not long after were introduced to a young actress recently moved up from London. This was Joan Littlewood who became MacColl's wife and work partner. In 1936, after a failed attempt to move to London, the couple returned to Manchester, and formed the Theatre Union. In 1940 a performance of The Last Edition – a 'living newspaper' – was halted by the police and MacColl and Littlewood were bound over for two years for breach of the peace. The necessities of wartime brought an end to Theatre Union. MacColl enlisted in the British Army during July 1940, but deserted in December. Why he did so, and why he was not prosecuted after the war, remain a mystery. 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. and an a capella rendition another decade later on "The Long Harvest" (1967). Over the years MacColl recorded and produced upwards of a hundred albums, many with English folk song collector and singer A. L. Lloyd. The pair released an ambitious series of eight LP albums of some 70 of the 305 Child Ballads. MacColl produced a number of LPs with Irish singer songwriter Dominic Behan, a brother of Irish playwright Brendan Behan. 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). At the time MacColl, who was twenty years older than Peggy, was still married to his second wife.