How Folk Songs Should Be Sung , Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger and the Critics Group

For many of my generation the journey from listening to Bob Dylan, and Pete Seeger through to Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs led to traditional English folk music.

During the late 1966 in to ’67 my Friday nights were spent in one of the upstairs rooms of the Old Turk’s Head on Lee Road where I listened and sang along with other young people not much older than me to traditional folk songs. Not that it was exclusively the music of the past. It was here that I saw a young Gordan Giltrap perform. I was just 17 and he perhaps a year older.

These were magical nights and even now over 45 years later I can remember that sense of belonging to something which was not only exciting but put me in touch with a tradition and a history which has never lost me.

From there it was just a short hop via LPs from the local library to Martin Carthy, and Ewan MacColl and along the way to performances of the Critics Group. I saw the Critics Group perform once in the basement of the English Folk and Dance Society and bought three of their records.

So it was with some pleasure that I came across a BBC 4 radio programme presented by Martin Carthy which sought to describe the relationship between Ewan MacColl and the group in the late 1960s and early 70s.
They were selected by MacColl who tutored them to “sing folk songs the way they should be sung and think about the origins of what they were singing.

BBC producer Charles Parker recorded these sessions to aid group analysis. 40 years on, the tapes have come to light. For the first time, a clear sound picture can be constructed of this influential group in action. Former group members Peggy Seeger, Sandra Kerr, Frankie Armstrong, Richard Snell, Brian Pearson and Phil Colclough recount six frantic years of rehearsing, performing and criticising each other. They recall the powerful hold that Ewan MacColl exerted which was eventually to lead to the collapse of the group in acrimony and blame." *


How Folk Songs Should Be Sung can be heard at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b018wy4j for the next five days.

Picture; cover from the LP, Waterloo to Peterloo, a collection od traditional songs from the period, Argo
ZFB 68 1968. It still sits along side A Merry Progress To London 1966, Argo ZDA 46 and Sweet Thames Flow Softly, Argo ZDA 47 1967 in my collection

* Notes from the introduction to the programme