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Sleeve Notes
"NO MORE RECORDING STUDIOS FOR US NEXT SUMMER!"
That was the firm resolution made, more often than not, in the course of a recording session. There would be a fifteen-minute break and we’d emerge into the sunlight feeling like a couple of slugs that had crept from under a stone. There and then, we resolved to enjoy the following summer before returning to the stale limbo of the recording studio.
It was a sequence of events which was to repeat itself annually for almost twenty summers. Of course we did realise fairly early on that we were the victims of a conspiracy. How else could we explain the fact that all our recording sessions coincided with a heat wave?
By 1973, we had reached breaking-point. That year we dug our heels in, refusing to succumb to the temptation to record. Instead, we began work on a book and spent the summer sweating over a typewriter, "Never mind," we said, "It’ll be different next year!" But it wasn’t. Our publishers were insisting on having the manuscript in their hands by mid-September. So all THAT summer we worked against the clock.
By the time the following summer arrived, we were well on the way with a second book and working flat out to get the bulk of the work done before October, when we were due to begin a concert tour of Australia, where (sure enough) we spent long lovely hot days in air terminals, press conferences and radio and television studios!
You remember 1976? … Summer began in early April and, for four-and-a-half months, the days dawned with clear blue skies and the sun shone and shone and shone while we typed and wrote and re-wrote and re-typed and swore, "Never again! No more books, no more recordings during the summer months!" And this time we meant it. We really meant it.
Early in May, 1977, we completed our second book and also our recording commitments. We were free to enjoy the summer!! But, where the hell WAS the summer? The East wind, which had started to blow in mid-March, was still blowing in May — it continued to blow throughout June and the first two weeks of July. Our favourite TV weather-caster smilingly referred to it as a "cold snap" Later it became a "cold spell’’ and, after a month it became "an extended cold spell". After that he just mumbled and tried to pretend it wasn’t really happening.
But it was happening, it was happening to us. Some of our friends, well-versed in climatological matters, attempted to convince us that we were just experiencing a perfectly logical weather cycle. We knew better. The joker who had pursued our recording sessions with heat waves for twenty years could be described as spiteful, perverse or even malign … but LOGICAL? Never!
Midway through July, we capitulated. Gave up. Or, perhaps as primitive peoples coax the elements with provocative, mimetic dancing, we convinced ourselves that by entering the airless, windowless sanctuary of the recording studio, we could charm the sun to shine.
The songs on this disc chronicle our 1977 surrender.
Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl
EWAN MacCOLL and PEGGY SEEGER have been the main folk duo in Britain for nearly twenty years. Peggy's field is American folk music, and she accompanies herself — and Ewan — on the guitar, the 5-string banjo, the Appalachian dulcimer, English concertina and autoharp. Ewan's specialty is Scots songs and ballads. He also sings English material. Both singers have in their repertoires a number of contemporary songs, many of which they have written themselves. Their work outside the performance field stretches to film, radio and television work, advisory and research projects, lecturing and teaching, compiling anthologies, field recording and writing. They are accompanied on several tracks of this record by their sons, Neill (18) and Calum (14).
The Riddle Song — Riddling, as an entertainment, holds an honoured place in folk ritual, even among contemporary urban-dwellers … "What lies at the bottom of the ocean and shivers? A Nervous Wreck!" In the olden-days, riddling was associated with creativity, with fecundity and fertility, with courtship and marriage, with sowing and reaping and, eventually, life and death. Most of the riddling ballads have, as protagonists, two lovers, or else a human being and the Devil-our little love song would seem to be taken from a longer ballad, possibly "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" (Child: 46). It is also found as part of a children's play-party piece in Britain and America. Our version is from Kentucky.
Brave Honest Jack Tar — C.H. Firth, in the introduction to "Naval Songs and Ballads", writes: "Ill usage made volunteers scarce and increased the discontent of pressed men. Complaints against empressment and references to the abuses to which it gave rise, became increasingly frequent during the latter half of the 18th. century." This song is a fine example of the genre.
Allende's Song — Don Lange, who wrote this song in 1974, lives in Solon, Iowa where he combines truck-driving with song-writing. The song arose out of the 1973 events, when the fascist junta demolished the Allende government.
Johnny Sangster — According to Gavin Grieg, this fine song is the work of William Scott who was born in Fetterangus in the parish of Old Deer, Aberdeenshire, in 1785. Scott, who began life as a herd-laddie, subsequently moved to Aberdeen where he was apprenticed to a tailor. Later he worked for a time in London and, after visiting the United States, returned to Old Deer where he spent the rest of his life.
Tam Lin — This fine ballad stands by itself and is not, as might have been expected, found in possession of any people but the Scottish. Yet it has connections, through the principal feature in the story, the re-transformation of Tam Lin, with Greek popular tradition older than Homer. (F.J. Child)
Dull Monday — This was the result of a boring Monday afternoon in 1965. It evolved while I was sitting around playing the banjo and I have been playing it ever since. It is undoubtedly put together from pieces of tunes I already knew so it sounds an older tune than it is. . Playing it makes Mondays brighter!
The Lag's Song — Ewan MacColl wrote this song in 1965 for "In Prison" a BBC documentary film on Strangeways Prison, Manchester.
The Parliamentary Polka (or Please Place In The Appropriate Receptacle Your Government White Paper) — Written by Ewan in 1975 and, unfortunately, still completely topical..
Barbara Allen (Child 84 ) — I have known this song for as long as I can remember, but have probably changed it unconciously over the years. It is a song which brings back many memories. My parents probably learned it from the singing of Bob Brown of Sour Lake in Texas, although there are versions of the ballad similar to this one all over the south and south-west of the United States. It is perhaps one of the most popular of the traditional ballads in America. It probably owes much of its popularity to its proliferation in print, in England and Scotland it appeared constantly on Broadsheets in the 17 and 1800's.
It has always seemed strange to me, as a woman singer, that Barbara should be branded 'hard-hearted' simply because she did not reciprocate a man's love. In the earlier (mostly Scots) texts, however, Barbara was characterised as a spiteful, pretty girl who returned a small slight with a large one, who "with scornful eye" looked down upon the corpse — "her cheek with laughter swellin'. The ballad goes back to the late 1600's and it is a favourite pastime of many folklorists to tie its events into the life of Charles II, whose last mistress Barbara Villiers (hated by all but her royal lover) is often thought to be the anti-heroine of the ballad. The fact that earlier texts portray Barbara as malicious may lend veracity to this theory, but time and tradition, however, have certainly made her — and the ballad — more romantic and soft-hearted.
As I Came In By Fisherraw — It is in songs such as this, that the 'Scottish Muse' is at its most eloquent. In three short stanzas, tenderness and irony combine to produce a short, sharp, social commentary on one of the Kirk's most unhappy traditions, i.e. the public confession of sexual intimacies outside wedlock. A young woman, whose passion had exceeded caution and who was showing the results of it, was made to sit before the elders of the Kirk on a cutty stool (a short low stool) while her lover mounted a pillar
Song For Calum — When Neill was eleven years old, I wrote a song for him. When Kitty was born I wrote one for her, Calum asked when it was his turn. At twelve-and-a-half, he was difficult to write a song about and, indeed, difficult to get along with. Mercurial, argumentative, he was neither man nor boy. When told he was at a 'difficult age', his immediate response was "Well, let's face it, Mum, YOU'RE at a difficult age, too!" This song was written on the M-6 in twenty minutes.
The Fishy Crab — Kirkpatrick Sharpe, commenting on this popular song, writes:"This gross old ditty is founded on a story in "Le Moyen de Parvenir", a book of which the extreme wit is at least equalled by it's beastliness." It's "grossness" does not appear to have affected the song's popularity in any way. It is one of the song titles mentioned in Wedderburn's "Complaynt of Scotland" (circa 1549).
Willie Riley (Laws M10 ) — Although I have only been singing this song for ten years, it is already a firm favourite. Of all the ballads in which boy-girl-parents form the eternal triangle it seems to me one of the most poignant, as it portrays the dramatis-personae by means of conversation rather than description. The practise of getting rid of a suitor whose worldly means do not match those of his intended has been a preoccupation of parents down through the ages. Even now, in modern Britain, cases do crop up in the tabloids and murder courts. And often the inequality in social-status, between the lovers is negligible. But 'vive (?) la difference' when it comes to the important matters like money and property.
This version is from Georgia, but the song itself originally comes from Bundoren near the boundaries of the three counties of Donegal, Fermanagh and Sligo, where a young Catholic Irishman fell in love with the daughter of a powerful Protestant local Squire.
The Ale-Wife — The male drunk is frequently encountered in Scots song. The drunken wife, although less common, is by no means a stranger there. Generally, she is portrayed as a loud-mouthed harridan who, after being tricked into sobriety by her long-suffering husband, is eventually transformed into a suitably docile spouse. Here, the mood is completely different; our ale-wife is a compulsive drinker. She cannot help herself and though her husband is at his wits end he still appears to love her.
Notes by the singers