Dirty Old Town Song lyrics and guitar chords
Dirty old town lyrics, chords and fingerstyle / picking tab. This is a pretty easy song for guitar and will teach you how to play the song in no time. The tenor banjo and 5 string banjo / mandolin chords shapes are included for standard Irish tuning of GDAE in the key of G Major.Recorded by Ewan McCall and by The Dubliners with Luke Kelly singing also by The Pogues, The High Kings, Paddy Reilly, Rod Stewart, Brush Shields, The Specials plus many more.The music time signature is 4/4. The sheet music for Dirty Old Town is in the tin whistle section. These chords are also suitable for strumming the mandolin or ukulele. The latest ballad group I found that recorded this song was The Whistlin' Donkeys in 2019. Guitar chords in chordpro format. Dirty old town tenor guitar / mandola tab IN cgda tuning now included.
Who wrote Dirty Old Town ? Ewan McCall wrote it.
What place is the song about ?
The song is about theCity of 'Salford, Lancashire, England and it was written in 1946.
Most recent recording by Jamie Webster - Live version at the Booton Factory Dublin. Youtube views in 11 months 1,225,046 [ impressive ]
What place is the song about ?
The song is about theCity of 'Salford, Lancashire, England and it was written in 1946.
Most recent recording by Jamie Webster - Live version at the Booton Factory Dublin. Youtube views in 11 months 1,225,046 [ impressive ]
It might surprise you to know that The Pogues Version
of Dirty Old Town uses three different keys.
The intro. on the harmonica is played in the key of
D Major. Then the verses are played in the key of G Major.
And the instrumental using the uillean pipes is in the
key of C Major
So the start of the song should be played on guitar using
the chords below.
[Harmonica Part Don't sing this part
I met my [D]love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a [G]dream by the old ca[D]nal
Dirty old [Em]town,,[D] ]
Then the verses in the key of G Major.
I met my [G]love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a [C]dream by the old ca[G]nal
Kissed a [G]girl by the factory wall
Dirty old [D]town dirty old [Em]town
Clouds a [G]drifting across the moon
Cats a [C]prowling on their[G] beat
Spring's a girl in the street at night
Dirty old [D]town dirty old [Em]town
[Instrimental on uilleann pipes
Don't sing this verses.
I met my [C]love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a [F]dream by the old ca[C]nal
Kissed a [C]girl by the factory wall
Dirty old [Dm]town dirty old [Am]town]
Heard a [G]siren from the docks
Saw a [C]train set the night on [G]fire
Smelled the spring on the smokey wind
Dirty old [D]town dirty old [Em]town
I'm going to[G] make a good sharp axe
Shining [C]steel tempered in the [G]fire
Will chop you down like an old dead tree
Dirty old [D]town dirty old [Em]town
Version in the key of C Major
I[C] met my love by the gas works wall,
Dreamed a[F] dream by the[G] old ca[C]nal,
Kissed my[Am] girl by the factry[C] wall,
Dirty old[Am] town,[G]dirty old[Am] town
[2]
I heard a siren from the docks,
Saw a train set the night on fire,
Smelled the spring on the smoky wind,
Dirty old town,dirty old town.
[3]
Clouds are drifting across the moon,
Cats are prowling on their beat
Springs a girl from the streets at night,
Diriy old town,dirty old town.
[4]
I'm going to make me a good sharp axe,
Shining steel,tempered in the fire,
I'll chop you down like an old dead tree,
Dirty old town,dirty old town
of Dirty Old Town uses three different keys.
The intro. on the harmonica is played in the key of
D Major. Then the verses are played in the key of G Major.
And the instrumental using the uillean pipes is in the
key of C Major
So the start of the song should be played on guitar using
the chords below.
[Harmonica Part Don't sing this part
I met my [D]love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a [G]dream by the old ca[D]nal
Dirty old [Em]town,,[D] ]
Then the verses in the key of G Major.
I met my [G]love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a [C]dream by the old ca[G]nal
Kissed a [G]girl by the factory wall
Dirty old [D]town dirty old [Em]town
Clouds a [G]drifting across the moon
Cats a [C]prowling on their[G] beat
Spring's a girl in the street at night
Dirty old [D]town dirty old [Em]town
[Instrimental on uilleann pipes
Don't sing this verses.
I met my [C]love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a [F]dream by the old ca[C]nal
Kissed a [C]girl by the factory wall
Dirty old [Dm]town dirty old [Am]town]
Heard a [G]siren from the docks
Saw a [C]train set the night on [G]fire
Smelled the spring on the smokey wind
Dirty old [D]town dirty old [Em]town
I'm going to[G] make a good sharp axe
Shining [C]steel tempered in the [G]fire
Will chop you down like an old dead tree
Dirty old [D]town dirty old [Em]town
Version in the key of C Major
I[C] met my love by the gas works wall,
Dreamed a[F] dream by the[G] old ca[C]nal,
Kissed my[Am] girl by the factry[C] wall,
Dirty old[Am] town,[G]dirty old[Am] town
[2]
I heard a siren from the docks,
Saw a train set the night on fire,
Smelled the spring on the smoky wind,
Dirty old town,dirty old town.
[3]
Clouds are drifting across the moon,
Cats are prowling on their beat
Springs a girl from the streets at night,
Diriy old town,dirty old town.
[4]
I'm going to make me a good sharp axe,
Shining steel,tempered in the fire,
I'll chop you down like an old dead tree,
Dirty old town,dirty old town
Below is the PDF Ebook of folk songs lyrics and chords. The songs are in 3 different keys, just like the versions of Dirty Old Town on this page. There's over 500 songs in the ebook. Most have only 3 easy chords.
Price €8.90 . I'll email the ebook after payment.
Price €8.90 . I'll email the ebook after payment.
Dirty old town guitar tab
Dirty old town tenor guitar / mandola tab tuning CGDA
Above is the youtube video of the Pogues playing Dirty Old Town
and below is the 5 string banjo chords.
and below is the 5 string banjo chords.
Dirty old town lyrics
Dirty Old Town Chords In The Key Of A
[A]Met my love, by the gas yard wall
Dreamed a [D]dream, by the old ca[A]nal
Kissed my girl, by the factory wall
Dirty old [E]town, dirty old [F#m]town
Key Of C
[C]Met my love, by the gas yard wall
Dreamed a [F]dream, by the old ca[C]nal
Kissed my girl, by the factory wall
Dirty old [G]town, dirty old [Am]town
[A]Met my love, by the gas yard wall
Dreamed a [D]dream, by the old ca[A]nal
Kissed my girl, by the factory wall
Dirty old [E]town, dirty old [F#m]town
Key Of C
[C]Met my love, by the gas yard wall
Dreamed a [F]dream, by the old ca[C]nal
Kissed my girl, by the factory wall
Dirty old [G]town, dirty old [Am]town
The Dubliners
Below is the banjo / mandolin chords shapes for the key of G Major.
A simple 3 chord job. The same chords are used in the whole song.
I met my [G]love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a [C]dream by the old ca[G]nal
Kissed a [G]girl by the factory wall
Dirty old [D]town dirty old [Em]town
A simple 3 chord job. The same chords are used in the whole song.
I met my [G]love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a [C]dream by the old ca[G]nal
Kissed a [G]girl by the factory wall
Dirty old [D]town dirty old [Em]town
The text below is from an interview with the song writer Ewan McColl.
At what stage in your lifetime did you become a leftist when i was a boy i grew up during the depression my father was a a militant uh an iron molder who'd been one of John Mcclane's boys used to stump the country with him when he was about 17. I've been blacklisted by in every foundry in scotland and i knew real poverty real hunger
and it seemed to be inconceivable that anybody could be anything other than a revolutionary and i went on from the by the time i was 14 i was busily engaged in doing all kinds of things I'd been on hunger marches I'd worked street theaters out on hunger marches wrote songs for hunger marches often parodies of pop songs i ran a group called the red megaphones and there were six of us all kids and we
had these megaphones and we stun the cone we say uh open your windows open your doors we are the red megaphones you know that we perform a 10-minute sketch hopefully before the cops arrive and bundle those off or on the on the steps of baths in marketplaces anyway you know and you're an absolute believer in art as a weapon of the revolution of social change especially music folk music yeah i don't believe that the today there is
any artworthy of the name besides the art created by the working class in the course of his struggle peggy can you tell me about your beginnings you come from very famous folk family completely different background um middle-class intelligentsia i would reckon is what what the the the jargon would call it parents both professional musicians are very comfortable life uh never really hungry until i decided to
be hungry by not mailing home for the money when i went away you know um what stage did uh Mccall rescue from the middle class intelligence when i was 20 well really what Ewan did was he showed me what the songs were about and the class that the songs came from and all at once the songs had meaning up until then there was something in them that i
didn't really know why they completely captured me but when i met you and i discovered why it was the total experience yes absolutely living the thing and singing the thing and meeting the people the people who are real people real that was the only word i could really apply to.
Now BBC Radio 4 the real Nicole as we approach the centenary of his birth John Cooper Clarke looks back at the early life of you and McCall a working-class boy from Salford who became renowned as a dramatist broadcaster songwriter and folk singer sulphate is the birthplace of many interesting figures from the arts world artist Terrell Riley acts as Albert Finney and Christopher Eccleston playwright Sheila Delaney musician Mark II Smith and master of the Queen's music sir Pizza Maxwell Davis to name just a few I also was born there on the same date though not the same year as the man who immortalized our city and sung the song being dirty old town the man being you
and McCall the gasworks dream the dream by the old canal kissed my girl by the factory wall dirty old town dirty old town it's just a singer and songwriter of songs like that and the first time ever I saw your face for which he is probably best known but it's perhaps the least known things about him that of the most fascinating his struggles as a young boy growing up in the Salford slums his involvement with radical Street theater and his change of identity after the Second World War let's begin by winding the clock back three months a 22nd of October 2014 the
25th anniversary of you and me Cole's death it's a cold bright autumn day and a group of Ewan's friends and acquaintances are gathered in the northeast corner of London's Russell Square as they do every year at midday on the anniversaries of his birth and his death they talk left drink beer and whisky and share memories of their you and they are stunning a stone's throw from an oak tree that was planted in his memory now you see it now you can see how big it's growing the roses get put on it every year there's a few daffodils come up which we've stuck bulbs in and today Nicola who was Cameron Trades Council secretary she's stuck in some rosemary
somewhere in there so this is just our memory of you and first of all it's an oak tree not inappropriately and it's about 30 foot high by now and if you go over there you can read what it says on the plaque this oak tree was planted in recognition of the strength and singleness of purpose for the future for peace and socialism Yumiko 25th of the 1st 1915 died on the 22nd of the 10th 1989 folk laureate singer dramatist and Marxist you can't ask a great deal more out of a human being than that her decidin' from the dog saw train set the night on fire smelt the spring on the smoky wind dirty old town dirty old this is how you and McCole described a sulphate of his
childhood Salford was a desert a petrified desert of blackened and decayed brick its bleakness was such as to the imagination of any but the toughest kid and black black as the idol of hell's waistcoat sulfur has changed a lot after recent regeneration projects in and around the dots that were abandoned in the early eighties sulphate is now home to the Lowry theatres and galleries the BBC's new key side development media city and a university soul shiny buildings now graced the sulphate skyline back in McCall's day the skyline was very different dominated by the dozens of chimneys from the numerous factories and mills belching out black and gray smoke
local historian and president of the sulphate Local History Society Roy Bullock is at Salford spiel perk we're now at the top of the park looking down a song got the dirty old town and this would have been an ideal spot to see the dirty old town in all its glory so if it wasn't a one-horse town it was built over many many different industries some very small some large you know so steel shipping on the docks cotton mills so it was hive of many industries suddenly lots of more dirty industries that's where they came from and the old town got christened as I also we're at the thick end of the river so everybody's look [Music]
the sole surviving child of for you and McHale was borned James Henry Miller on 25th of January 1915 in the lower Broughton area of Salford as a result of the booming textile industry that sound had enjoyed massive growth during the Industrial Revolution and what was once a small market sound was transformed into a major industrial center in the early 20th century the heavy industries on which the communities depended started to decline and during the nineteen twenties and thirties its population had plummeted by 29% American folk singer and musician Peggy Seeger met McCall in 1956 it was for her he wrote the first time ever I saw your face Peggy was his partner until the day
he died he had a new sense of continual personal humiliation his childhood was one of personal humiliation brought up very very poor they lived in a sulphur slung on Coburg Street his father for the most of you in this memory was blacklisted he was an iron motor blacklisted for political activity his mother got up 4:30 in the morning took the bus to where she would clean offices then she would go and clean people's houses occasionally when he was not at school he would go with her and just sit while she scrubbed mrs. marks kitchen floor Marks and Spencers he remembers her working literally like a dog because she
was the main breadwinner then she'd come home bringing home food that was not eaten off the table of mrs. marks that kind of thing just hammers it into you that you are the lowest of the low from an early age James Miller or Jimmy Miller as he would be known up until after the Second World War was used to political discussion and debates in the family home his dad's involvement with the unions meant that political activities were parts of everyday life from a young age he accompanied his father to lectures talks and political meetings as equally important an influence was the fact that his parents were Scots and they lived in
a close-knit community of Scots friends and extended family been Hakka is the author of classics the cultural and political life of you and McCall that sense of community particularly a community that was sort of in exile created a very close-knit sometimes insular atmosphere but that in itself became a really important vector in terms of Scottish music and Scottish singing and the Scottish cultural rituals he knew a lot of songs by the time he was 10 you know he'd heard he's singing these parents singing these songs and that creates in in this odd sort of doubleness of living in England but also feeling Scottish that's coming very powerfully I think out of that
situation in which he grew up so at home McCall was steeped in left-wing politics as well as the ballad songs and culture of the Celtic music tradition he was also encouraged to read by his dad who was an enthusiastic reader bringing second-hand books home each Saturday from Pendleton murky knowledge is never a waste son he was frequently advised what was he like outside of the home at school he was a timid boy he was bookish and he just immediately found school an intimidating place it made him very anxious and then they were sort of what might sound sort of relatively trivial episodes but they really had a sort of powerful impact on the way that he did he saw school he talks about in his
autobiography about the teacher would ask them to bring in an apple to draw and there were no apples in the family home so he took in an onion and and the teacher just taunted it with this for the rest of the school year and the ages talked about the school being a place of sort of pathological cruelty we know from some of the teachers so he just wants to be as inconspicuous as possible there and to leave as soon as possible he left school in 1929 aged 14 without any qualifications just as the great slump was started should say cold in his memoirs unemployment looms large and his memories of this period are vivid he writes about long
days spent walking through the desolation cold peel park of infinite and infinitely boring afternoon stretching out before him like a road that doesn't go anywhere and of queueing gets Albion Street labor exchange to get his unemployment currents temps I think this just a pervasive sense of hopelessness there's no vision of how it's going to end one just felt locked into the community which was disintegrating and locked into one's neighborhood it was very difficult to leave home because of course didn't have a job he doesn't have any skills particularly but the flip side of that paradoxically is that unemployment created a lot of time to fill and he did
fill it by going to the library and reading and me it sounds above the mounting looking back but how many is one of the kind of late British working class or no died acts he really did you know educate himself in Salford Public Library Salford royal Museum and public library was built in Peel Park in 18-49 it was the first free municipal public library in the United Kingdom and a great source of learning and entertainment for the local people and as he said in a 1968 interview it was a place where one could keep warm you go in the public library it's warm and the old men are standing there leaning against the pipes to get warm and all the newspapers parts are occupied and
you pick a book up and I can remember then mixed in with the smell of leather that you get the smell of the unemployed a kind of sour or a bitter sweet smell you know mixed in with the smell of old books dust and leather and all the rest of it so that there are certain writers that if I pick up a say a Dostoyevsky today particularly if it's a very earliest one I read the House of the Dead immediately and with the first page comes at that smell the smell of poverty in 1931 you know there was a string of lodges at the family home and one of those lodges Harrison was a member of the young Communist League and was also involved in socialist theatre he encourages Merkel still known as Jimmy
Miller of course to get involved so he did first he joined socialist theater group the Clarion players then start attending the regular young Communist League or ycl branch meetings I think there for the first time the young McColl meets kindred spirits he meets like-minded working-class intellectuals who were leading in the way that he is and I think the ycl and the Communist Party and the education of its militants very seriously members are expected to lead to party literature and have a line on it they're expected to educate themselves in the classics of Marxist Lenin ISM and so suddenly I think that untapped intellectual energies finding
an outlet in a very powerful way and you know he rises quickly through the ranks of of the Communist Party locally and he's not identified by the police as being somebody to watch and very soon he's giving kind of evening classes and talks about the history of the making of the of the British working-class 60% of the Communist Party nationally was unemployed at this time and it's members that sets up the National unemployed workers movement whose purpose was to stand up for the rights of and provide support to the growing numbers of unemployed workers in the interwar years the early 1930s saw a series of national protests against austerity with the cuts falling heaviest on those that could
least afford them the match on Bexley square in the autumn of 1931 was one of those protests a flashpoints in self its history 10,000 people marched on the town hall demanding no cuts to amongst other things unemployment benefit free winter coal for the unemployed and free milk at school so what specifically would have been McCall's role in protests like this one then harker again at that point he's involved in agitprop Street Theatre and his main contribution to those marches like Bexley Square would be to put on political skits from the back of a loving often while people are congregated and waiting for the March to begin early 1930s coincides with a period of
militancy across the textile industry big spikes of a big demonstrations they were lockouts and McColl's troop which are called the led megaphones by this stage are doing those kinds of theatrical sketches so it gives him a kind of way into those you know episodes in labor history spurred on by their experiences with red megaphones McCall and his colleagues then formed theater of action its performances in working-class areas reflected workers lives and struggles McCall said he wanted to create a new theatre language one which people understood that would move them but not sort down to them in 1934 he met Joan Littlewood a theatre student from the East End of London she
soon joined theater of action and together they became a hugely influential force in the world of theater McCall and Joan Littlewood married and in 1936 formed their most ambitious there's events it's a date they it's a union all the while mi5 and the Special Branch kept an eye on the couple because of their support for the Communist Party and in 1939 shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War their performance of the last addition an experimental living newspaper a political skit which saw the world through the eyes of a socialist was stopped by the police they were both arrested charged with breaching the
peace and ban from theatre for two years the necessities of wartime brought an end so theatre Union and in July 1940 McColl still known as Jimmy Miller of course was called up and enlisted in the Army in December 1940 he absconded disappeared and sewn up after the war in 1945 sport in a new name Ewan MacColl he doesn't mention the world war two years in his autobiography itself from the thirties onwards he becomes very interested in kind of Scottish literary nationalism that's starting to flower in which Scottish poets are rediscovering forgotten Scottish writers and claiming a kind of linear to them and in some cases those lighters start to take the names of forgotten
Scottish forebears the coal comes in becomes interested in this as a young writer he starts to exaggerate his Scottish nurse and before too long he's claiming that he was born in up to our dimparcio which is his mother's birthplace and then in 1945 when he assumes the name of you and McCall I mean that is also clearly at one level a powerful identification with this Scottish literally. you Nathan's a whole group of Scottish poets writers artists decided to revive the lallans tongue so they each took a pen name Christopher grieve took the name Hugh McDermott and James Henry Miller Jimmy Miller took the name Ewan MaColl ewan
is excoriated for doing this who's trying to become scoffs he's trying to forget his background he wasn't his mother always called in Jimmy I called him Ewan he spoke purus cops told he went to school and I thought he could speak Scots beautifully he went into Scots automatically when he was in Scotland he just started talking like a Scot so that was a deeply ingrained language for him and he has cooked it Peggy [Music] the newly named you and McHale and Joan Littlewood were reunited after World War Two and resumed their work in theater starting their final collaboration the influential theatre workshop for six
years they took the theater to the people of Britain playing in mission halls - well fairs and public parks as well as theaters McHale wrote eleven plays during this period a number of which were performed overseas and translated into German French polish and Russian his works were critically acclaimed and were grabbing the attention of his contemporaries you have to remember the the you know the quote from George Bernard Shaw do you know that quote legendary folk musician and singer Martin Carthy apart from myself there is one other person of genius working in the British theatre today and that person is Ewan MacColl that's what
George Boetticher said apart from myself really infuriated Joan Littlewood by ditching theatre and becoming a folk singer and putting it crudely there's a programme about him and she actually laughs as she said he began focusing grew a beard but she obviously thought that he was a tremendous loss to theatre George Bernard Shaw would agree like many teenagers in the 1950s Martin Carthy came to music via the skiffle craze spurred on by Lonnie Donegan's Rock Island line he picked up his dad's acoustic it's uh and went on to become one of the most if not the most influential folk performer of the past half century when I was at school I was big mates with it with the bloke in the
year but I've got a guy called Nick Nichols and Nick started talking about this place where they as he described it they sang all the original versions of the skiffle hits and it was the place called The Princess Louise in a high hope and so I thought gonna go along there and I went along there and in the chair was you and Cole well I turned up in 1956 the club had been going for four years it was called ballets and blues Martin Carthy talks about turning up and this is one of the main features of the folk movement is it's like a relay race and you willingly pass the baton to the next generation that's what the club did it welcomed singers of all sorts and you
sat and you learned until you were good enough to sing on stage I didn't hear anybody do any of the original versions of the skiffle hits but I heard other stuff that I found really intriguing and the spectacular one the one that changed my life was seeing Sam Lana that was the first time I saw you and actually having something to do with the music I was interested in and he never sang a song himself all night all he did was talk about Sam Lana and talked to Sam Lana and sort of gets stories out of him and then get songs and it was choreographed quite brilliantly and I was completely enthralled and that governed the way I was gonna go Sam Lana was a herring fisherman from win sittin' on the Norfolk
coast Ewan and Peggy along with BBC producer Charles Parker had visited him earlier that year 1959 to record material for the radio balance the following year the radio ballad singing the fishing was released it contained a lot of the material collected from Sam Lana and won the prestigious Prix d'Italia for radio documentary we present Sam Lana of Winterton of junkie Aaron the king of the sea Sadie to the skipper look under your lacing in windy on where the most stormy on whether boys when they wind blow all together and Ronnie balls of Yarmouth in singing the fishing a tribute to the fishing communities of East Anglia and of the Murray Firth
whose livelihood has been the herring if you fish for the Heron they ruin your life I swim at night you've got to be out there at night waiting for him to swim with our son the gear we're fair and truss is a wonder to pick wings of a fish up the miss vibrant with life the radio ballads were groundbreaking it was a new format herself narrating documentary which told a story through the words of ordinary people often from rarely heard communities people's attitudes to the voices of ordinary people on the radio did change as a result they still sound pioneering even now and they still outstrip most BBC radio output I mean they took a long
time to make they were massively expensive but nonetheless I think in terms of vadik lysing formally and politically what radio could be in do I mean I think it's a very powerful legacy during the years of the folk revival and the ballads and blues club you and wasn't without his critics many British singers and musicians at that time were singing in American songs but you and led a quest to seek out music from one's own culture and did insist people should sing songs only from where they came from and it did rub some people up the wrong way the basic gist of it was well Englishmen sing English songs Scots people sing Scott songs Irish people sing Irish song
I don't hear an English machine in American song doo-dah doo-dah and people used to say that's outrageous people should be free to do what they want to do and to my mind even then it's his club if you don't want to follow the rules go somewhere else fine but his his reasoning was that I would look can't fight some of this stuff because it's it's fascinating and beautiful and exciting yeah he's right we wouldn't be where we are now without him that's a fact I wouldn't be where I am without him you and McHale may well have been the most influential figure in the folk song revival and as we've heard he was a great singer a skilled song Smith a
trailblazing broadcaster and revered playwright a master craftsman he wrote over 300 songs which have been sung by artists as diverse as the Pogues Roberta Flack Dick Dakin and Elvis he was also a husband and a father of five Neal Kellerman kitsy his three children with Peggy and Sue from an earlier marriage to Jean new love Hamish and the late Kirsty MacColl from his adolescent years growing up in lower Broughton Salford the very dirty old sound itself he was a relentless campaigner for socialism and did a lot for working people's movements both in the UK and overseas your childhood tells you a lot about yourself tells other people a lot about you people who refer
to me as a political personage but I got it secondhand I never came near to starving it was gut politics with him and he never never be traded I think he would have not fitted in to where things are now once big industry was gone he found it difficult to find a political nature for himself the issues are no longer black and white issues are a hundred and fifty shades of gray and steering your way around that and political correctness these are all things he would not have been comfortable whether it was so clear cut in his day working class and the oppressors the worker the boss was a union man hard all these days he understood the system and was wise to
the bus's waves he said if you won what yours by right you'll have to struggle with all your might they'll rob you blind if you don't fight some bands were smile let's end the program where we began back in Russell Square London 22nd of October 2014 where you ins friends are gathered as they do each year on the anniversary of his birth and of his death beside the oak tree that was planted in his memory may I thank you all once again for coming to celebrate a man who for me was just supreme may I ask you to come on the 25th of January which will be Ewan's hundredth anniversary and I will try to get a chair organized by then to
commemorate him watch out for the man with the silicon chip hold on to your job with a good firm grip cuz if you don't kill of and your chips the same as my old man [Music] the real McHale was presented by John Cooper Clarke the producer was Kelly while and it was a smooth operations
production for BBC Radio 4
At what stage in your lifetime did you become a leftist when i was a boy i grew up during the depression my father was a a militant uh an iron molder who'd been one of John Mcclane's boys used to stump the country with him when he was about 17. I've been blacklisted by in every foundry in scotland and i knew real poverty real hunger
and it seemed to be inconceivable that anybody could be anything other than a revolutionary and i went on from the by the time i was 14 i was busily engaged in doing all kinds of things I'd been on hunger marches I'd worked street theaters out on hunger marches wrote songs for hunger marches often parodies of pop songs i ran a group called the red megaphones and there were six of us all kids and we
had these megaphones and we stun the cone we say uh open your windows open your doors we are the red megaphones you know that we perform a 10-minute sketch hopefully before the cops arrive and bundle those off or on the on the steps of baths in marketplaces anyway you know and you're an absolute believer in art as a weapon of the revolution of social change especially music folk music yeah i don't believe that the today there is
any artworthy of the name besides the art created by the working class in the course of his struggle peggy can you tell me about your beginnings you come from very famous folk family completely different background um middle-class intelligentsia i would reckon is what what the the the jargon would call it parents both professional musicians are very comfortable life uh never really hungry until i decided to
be hungry by not mailing home for the money when i went away you know um what stage did uh Mccall rescue from the middle class intelligence when i was 20 well really what Ewan did was he showed me what the songs were about and the class that the songs came from and all at once the songs had meaning up until then there was something in them that i
didn't really know why they completely captured me but when i met you and i discovered why it was the total experience yes absolutely living the thing and singing the thing and meeting the people the people who are real people real that was the only word i could really apply to.
Now BBC Radio 4 the real Nicole as we approach the centenary of his birth John Cooper Clarke looks back at the early life of you and McCall a working-class boy from Salford who became renowned as a dramatist broadcaster songwriter and folk singer sulphate is the birthplace of many interesting figures from the arts world artist Terrell Riley acts as Albert Finney and Christopher Eccleston playwright Sheila Delaney musician Mark II Smith and master of the Queen's music sir Pizza Maxwell Davis to name just a few I also was born there on the same date though not the same year as the man who immortalized our city and sung the song being dirty old town the man being you
and McCall the gasworks dream the dream by the old canal kissed my girl by the factory wall dirty old town dirty old town it's just a singer and songwriter of songs like that and the first time ever I saw your face for which he is probably best known but it's perhaps the least known things about him that of the most fascinating his struggles as a young boy growing up in the Salford slums his involvement with radical Street theater and his change of identity after the Second World War let's begin by winding the clock back three months a 22nd of October 2014 the
25th anniversary of you and me Cole's death it's a cold bright autumn day and a group of Ewan's friends and acquaintances are gathered in the northeast corner of London's Russell Square as they do every year at midday on the anniversaries of his birth and his death they talk left drink beer and whisky and share memories of their you and they are stunning a stone's throw from an oak tree that was planted in his memory now you see it now you can see how big it's growing the roses get put on it every year there's a few daffodils come up which we've stuck bulbs in and today Nicola who was Cameron Trades Council secretary she's stuck in some rosemary
somewhere in there so this is just our memory of you and first of all it's an oak tree not inappropriately and it's about 30 foot high by now and if you go over there you can read what it says on the plaque this oak tree was planted in recognition of the strength and singleness of purpose for the future for peace and socialism Yumiko 25th of the 1st 1915 died on the 22nd of the 10th 1989 folk laureate singer dramatist and Marxist you can't ask a great deal more out of a human being than that her decidin' from the dog saw train set the night on fire smelt the spring on the smoky wind dirty old town dirty old this is how you and McCole described a sulphate of his
childhood Salford was a desert a petrified desert of blackened and decayed brick its bleakness was such as to the imagination of any but the toughest kid and black black as the idol of hell's waistcoat sulfur has changed a lot after recent regeneration projects in and around the dots that were abandoned in the early eighties sulphate is now home to the Lowry theatres and galleries the BBC's new key side development media city and a university soul shiny buildings now graced the sulphate skyline back in McCall's day the skyline was very different dominated by the dozens of chimneys from the numerous factories and mills belching out black and gray smoke
local historian and president of the sulphate Local History Society Roy Bullock is at Salford spiel perk we're now at the top of the park looking down a song got the dirty old town and this would have been an ideal spot to see the dirty old town in all its glory so if it wasn't a one-horse town it was built over many many different industries some very small some large you know so steel shipping on the docks cotton mills so it was hive of many industries suddenly lots of more dirty industries that's where they came from and the old town got christened as I also we're at the thick end of the river so everybody's look [Music]
the sole surviving child of for you and McHale was borned James Henry Miller on 25th of January 1915 in the lower Broughton area of Salford as a result of the booming textile industry that sound had enjoyed massive growth during the Industrial Revolution and what was once a small market sound was transformed into a major industrial center in the early 20th century the heavy industries on which the communities depended started to decline and during the nineteen twenties and thirties its population had plummeted by 29% American folk singer and musician Peggy Seeger met McCall in 1956 it was for her he wrote the first time ever I saw your face Peggy was his partner until the day
he died he had a new sense of continual personal humiliation his childhood was one of personal humiliation brought up very very poor they lived in a sulphur slung on Coburg Street his father for the most of you in this memory was blacklisted he was an iron motor blacklisted for political activity his mother got up 4:30 in the morning took the bus to where she would clean offices then she would go and clean people's houses occasionally when he was not at school he would go with her and just sit while she scrubbed mrs. marks kitchen floor Marks and Spencers he remembers her working literally like a dog because she
was the main breadwinner then she'd come home bringing home food that was not eaten off the table of mrs. marks that kind of thing just hammers it into you that you are the lowest of the low from an early age James Miller or Jimmy Miller as he would be known up until after the Second World War was used to political discussion and debates in the family home his dad's involvement with the unions meant that political activities were parts of everyday life from a young age he accompanied his father to lectures talks and political meetings as equally important an influence was the fact that his parents were Scots and they lived in
a close-knit community of Scots friends and extended family been Hakka is the author of classics the cultural and political life of you and McCall that sense of community particularly a community that was sort of in exile created a very close-knit sometimes insular atmosphere but that in itself became a really important vector in terms of Scottish music and Scottish singing and the Scottish cultural rituals he knew a lot of songs by the time he was 10 you know he'd heard he's singing these parents singing these songs and that creates in in this odd sort of doubleness of living in England but also feeling Scottish that's coming very powerfully I think out of that
situation in which he grew up so at home McCall was steeped in left-wing politics as well as the ballad songs and culture of the Celtic music tradition he was also encouraged to read by his dad who was an enthusiastic reader bringing second-hand books home each Saturday from Pendleton murky knowledge is never a waste son he was frequently advised what was he like outside of the home at school he was a timid boy he was bookish and he just immediately found school an intimidating place it made him very anxious and then they were sort of what might sound sort of relatively trivial episodes but they really had a sort of powerful impact on the way that he did he saw school he talks about in his
autobiography about the teacher would ask them to bring in an apple to draw and there were no apples in the family home so he took in an onion and and the teacher just taunted it with this for the rest of the school year and the ages talked about the school being a place of sort of pathological cruelty we know from some of the teachers so he just wants to be as inconspicuous as possible there and to leave as soon as possible he left school in 1929 aged 14 without any qualifications just as the great slump was started should say cold in his memoirs unemployment looms large and his memories of this period are vivid he writes about long
days spent walking through the desolation cold peel park of infinite and infinitely boring afternoon stretching out before him like a road that doesn't go anywhere and of queueing gets Albion Street labor exchange to get his unemployment currents temps I think this just a pervasive sense of hopelessness there's no vision of how it's going to end one just felt locked into the community which was disintegrating and locked into one's neighborhood it was very difficult to leave home because of course didn't have a job he doesn't have any skills particularly but the flip side of that paradoxically is that unemployment created a lot of time to fill and he did
fill it by going to the library and reading and me it sounds above the mounting looking back but how many is one of the kind of late British working class or no died acts he really did you know educate himself in Salford Public Library Salford royal Museum and public library was built in Peel Park in 18-49 it was the first free municipal public library in the United Kingdom and a great source of learning and entertainment for the local people and as he said in a 1968 interview it was a place where one could keep warm you go in the public library it's warm and the old men are standing there leaning against the pipes to get warm and all the newspapers parts are occupied and
you pick a book up and I can remember then mixed in with the smell of leather that you get the smell of the unemployed a kind of sour or a bitter sweet smell you know mixed in with the smell of old books dust and leather and all the rest of it so that there are certain writers that if I pick up a say a Dostoyevsky today particularly if it's a very earliest one I read the House of the Dead immediately and with the first page comes at that smell the smell of poverty in 1931 you know there was a string of lodges at the family home and one of those lodges Harrison was a member of the young Communist League and was also involved in socialist theatre he encourages Merkel still known as Jimmy
Miller of course to get involved so he did first he joined socialist theater group the Clarion players then start attending the regular young Communist League or ycl branch meetings I think there for the first time the young McColl meets kindred spirits he meets like-minded working-class intellectuals who were leading in the way that he is and I think the ycl and the Communist Party and the education of its militants very seriously members are expected to lead to party literature and have a line on it they're expected to educate themselves in the classics of Marxist Lenin ISM and so suddenly I think that untapped intellectual energies finding
an outlet in a very powerful way and you know he rises quickly through the ranks of of the Communist Party locally and he's not identified by the police as being somebody to watch and very soon he's giving kind of evening classes and talks about the history of the making of the of the British working-class 60% of the Communist Party nationally was unemployed at this time and it's members that sets up the National unemployed workers movement whose purpose was to stand up for the rights of and provide support to the growing numbers of unemployed workers in the interwar years the early 1930s saw a series of national protests against austerity with the cuts falling heaviest on those that could
least afford them the match on Bexley square in the autumn of 1931 was one of those protests a flashpoints in self its history 10,000 people marched on the town hall demanding no cuts to amongst other things unemployment benefit free winter coal for the unemployed and free milk at school so what specifically would have been McCall's role in protests like this one then harker again at that point he's involved in agitprop Street Theatre and his main contribution to those marches like Bexley Square would be to put on political skits from the back of a loving often while people are congregated and waiting for the March to begin early 1930s coincides with a period of
militancy across the textile industry big spikes of a big demonstrations they were lockouts and McColl's troop which are called the led megaphones by this stage are doing those kinds of theatrical sketches so it gives him a kind of way into those you know episodes in labor history spurred on by their experiences with red megaphones McCall and his colleagues then formed theater of action its performances in working-class areas reflected workers lives and struggles McCall said he wanted to create a new theatre language one which people understood that would move them but not sort down to them in 1934 he met Joan Littlewood a theatre student from the East End of London she
soon joined theater of action and together they became a hugely influential force in the world of theater McCall and Joan Littlewood married and in 1936 formed their most ambitious there's events it's a date they it's a union all the while mi5 and the Special Branch kept an eye on the couple because of their support for the Communist Party and in 1939 shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War their performance of the last addition an experimental living newspaper a political skit which saw the world through the eyes of a socialist was stopped by the police they were both arrested charged with breaching the
peace and ban from theatre for two years the necessities of wartime brought an end so theatre Union and in July 1940 McColl still known as Jimmy Miller of course was called up and enlisted in the Army in December 1940 he absconded disappeared and sewn up after the war in 1945 sport in a new name Ewan MacColl he doesn't mention the world war two years in his autobiography itself from the thirties onwards he becomes very interested in kind of Scottish literary nationalism that's starting to flower in which Scottish poets are rediscovering forgotten Scottish writers and claiming a kind of linear to them and in some cases those lighters start to take the names of forgotten
Scottish forebears the coal comes in becomes interested in this as a young writer he starts to exaggerate his Scottish nurse and before too long he's claiming that he was born in up to our dimparcio which is his mother's birthplace and then in 1945 when he assumes the name of you and McCall I mean that is also clearly at one level a powerful identification with this Scottish literally. you Nathan's a whole group of Scottish poets writers artists decided to revive the lallans tongue so they each took a pen name Christopher grieve took the name Hugh McDermott and James Henry Miller Jimmy Miller took the name Ewan MaColl ewan
is excoriated for doing this who's trying to become scoffs he's trying to forget his background he wasn't his mother always called in Jimmy I called him Ewan he spoke purus cops told he went to school and I thought he could speak Scots beautifully he went into Scots automatically when he was in Scotland he just started talking like a Scot so that was a deeply ingrained language for him and he has cooked it Peggy [Music] the newly named you and McHale and Joan Littlewood were reunited after World War Two and resumed their work in theater starting their final collaboration the influential theatre workshop for six
years they took the theater to the people of Britain playing in mission halls - well fairs and public parks as well as theaters McHale wrote eleven plays during this period a number of which were performed overseas and translated into German French polish and Russian his works were critically acclaimed and were grabbing the attention of his contemporaries you have to remember the the you know the quote from George Bernard Shaw do you know that quote legendary folk musician and singer Martin Carthy apart from myself there is one other person of genius working in the British theatre today and that person is Ewan MacColl that's what
George Boetticher said apart from myself really infuriated Joan Littlewood by ditching theatre and becoming a folk singer and putting it crudely there's a programme about him and she actually laughs as she said he began focusing grew a beard but she obviously thought that he was a tremendous loss to theatre George Bernard Shaw would agree like many teenagers in the 1950s Martin Carthy came to music via the skiffle craze spurred on by Lonnie Donegan's Rock Island line he picked up his dad's acoustic it's uh and went on to become one of the most if not the most influential folk performer of the past half century when I was at school I was big mates with it with the bloke in the
year but I've got a guy called Nick Nichols and Nick started talking about this place where they as he described it they sang all the original versions of the skiffle hits and it was the place called The Princess Louise in a high hope and so I thought gonna go along there and I went along there and in the chair was you and Cole well I turned up in 1956 the club had been going for four years it was called ballets and blues Martin Carthy talks about turning up and this is one of the main features of the folk movement is it's like a relay race and you willingly pass the baton to the next generation that's what the club did it welcomed singers of all sorts and you
sat and you learned until you were good enough to sing on stage I didn't hear anybody do any of the original versions of the skiffle hits but I heard other stuff that I found really intriguing and the spectacular one the one that changed my life was seeing Sam Lana that was the first time I saw you and actually having something to do with the music I was interested in and he never sang a song himself all night all he did was talk about Sam Lana and talked to Sam Lana and sort of gets stories out of him and then get songs and it was choreographed quite brilliantly and I was completely enthralled and that governed the way I was gonna go Sam Lana was a herring fisherman from win sittin' on the Norfolk
coast Ewan and Peggy along with BBC producer Charles Parker had visited him earlier that year 1959 to record material for the radio balance the following year the radio ballad singing the fishing was released it contained a lot of the material collected from Sam Lana and won the prestigious Prix d'Italia for radio documentary we present Sam Lana of Winterton of junkie Aaron the king of the sea Sadie to the skipper look under your lacing in windy on where the most stormy on whether boys when they wind blow all together and Ronnie balls of Yarmouth in singing the fishing a tribute to the fishing communities of East Anglia and of the Murray Firth
whose livelihood has been the herring if you fish for the Heron they ruin your life I swim at night you've got to be out there at night waiting for him to swim with our son the gear we're fair and truss is a wonder to pick wings of a fish up the miss vibrant with life the radio ballads were groundbreaking it was a new format herself narrating documentary which told a story through the words of ordinary people often from rarely heard communities people's attitudes to the voices of ordinary people on the radio did change as a result they still sound pioneering even now and they still outstrip most BBC radio output I mean they took a long
time to make they were massively expensive but nonetheless I think in terms of vadik lysing formally and politically what radio could be in do I mean I think it's a very powerful legacy during the years of the folk revival and the ballads and blues club you and wasn't without his critics many British singers and musicians at that time were singing in American songs but you and led a quest to seek out music from one's own culture and did insist people should sing songs only from where they came from and it did rub some people up the wrong way the basic gist of it was well Englishmen sing English songs Scots people sing Scott songs Irish people sing Irish song
I don't hear an English machine in American song doo-dah doo-dah and people used to say that's outrageous people should be free to do what they want to do and to my mind even then it's his club if you don't want to follow the rules go somewhere else fine but his his reasoning was that I would look can't fight some of this stuff because it's it's fascinating and beautiful and exciting yeah he's right we wouldn't be where we are now without him that's a fact I wouldn't be where I am without him you and McHale may well have been the most influential figure in the folk song revival and as we've heard he was a great singer a skilled song Smith a
trailblazing broadcaster and revered playwright a master craftsman he wrote over 300 songs which have been sung by artists as diverse as the Pogues Roberta Flack Dick Dakin and Elvis he was also a husband and a father of five Neal Kellerman kitsy his three children with Peggy and Sue from an earlier marriage to Jean new love Hamish and the late Kirsty MacColl from his adolescent years growing up in lower Broughton Salford the very dirty old sound itself he was a relentless campaigner for socialism and did a lot for working people's movements both in the UK and overseas your childhood tells you a lot about yourself tells other people a lot about you people who refer
to me as a political personage but I got it secondhand I never came near to starving it was gut politics with him and he never never be traded I think he would have not fitted in to where things are now once big industry was gone he found it difficult to find a political nature for himself the issues are no longer black and white issues are a hundred and fifty shades of gray and steering your way around that and political correctness these are all things he would not have been comfortable whether it was so clear cut in his day working class and the oppressors the worker the boss was a union man hard all these days he understood the system and was wise to
the bus's waves he said if you won what yours by right you'll have to struggle with all your might they'll rob you blind if you don't fight some bands were smile let's end the program where we began back in Russell Square London 22nd of October 2014 where you ins friends are gathered as they do each year on the anniversary of his birth and of his death beside the oak tree that was planted in his memory may I thank you all once again for coming to celebrate a man who for me was just supreme may I ask you to come on the 25th of January which will be Ewan's hundredth anniversary and I will try to get a chair organized by then to
commemorate him watch out for the man with the silicon chip hold on to your job with a good firm grip cuz if you don't kill of and your chips the same as my old man [Music] the real McHale was presented by John Cooper Clarke the producer was Kelly while and it was a smooth operations
production for BBC Radio 4
