SalfordOnline.com is linking up once again with The Lowry Theatre to offer readers the chance to win Ewan MacColl tickets for a special tribute concert to the Salford legend.
On 4 November at the Salford Quays theatre, MacColl’s third wife, US folk singer Peggy Seeger, along with Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson and Seth Lakeman, will take MacColl’s huge songbook for a spin.
Blood & Roses – The Songs of Ewan MacColl marks 100 years since his birth and celebrates the release of a CD of his music Joy of Living.
An evening not to be missed, this is a one-off chance to hear his beautiful music and heartfelt lyrics as you’ve never heard them before.
His daughter from his second marriage was the singer Kirsty MacColl, while his grandson Jamie MacColl now plays with indie stalwarts Bombay Bicycle Group, who also contributed a cover version of ‘The Young Birds’ for Joy of Living.
All you have to do to enter is send your name, address and contact phone number to newsdesk@salfordonline.com, marking your entry ‘Ewan MacColl Competition’.
The first name out of our fabled lucky hat will win the pair of tickets and a copy of the CD.
The competition closes on Wednesday 28 October 2015.
Working-class legend Ewan MacColl was born James Henry Miller on 25 January 1915 at 4 Andrew Street in Broughton.
His socialist family moved to the city to look for work after being blacklisted at practically every foundry in Scotland for their trade union activism.
Miller would leave school at just 14 to join the massed ranks of the unemployed in Salford, but his talent as a songwriter would shine through and he would later achieve worldwide fame under his stage name of Ewan MacColl.
One of his best known works is ‘The Manchester Rambler’, from which came the famous lines: “I may be a wage slave on Monday/But I am a free man on Sunday”, was written after a mass trespass onto Kinder Scout.
His star rose highest after his attendance at The Battle of Bexley Square in October 1931 when an estimated 10,000 people marched to Bexley Square in Salford to hand in a petition voicing their concerns about government welfare cuts.
MacColl will always be remembered as a brilliant songwriter and his ditty ‘Dirty Old Town’ has become the unofficial anthem of Salford, covered by many artists including The Pogues and Rod Stewart.
In 1956 he fell in love with Peggy Seeger, writing ‘The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face’ for her, which won a Grammy and was a 1972 hit for Roberta Flack.
Ewan MacColl died in 1989 at the age of 73 after complications following heart surgery.
The Working Class Movement Library on The Crescent, Salford, holds material from all aspects of his political and cultural life.
Main image: © www.ewanmaccoll.com
