The Critics Group, also known as The London Critics Group, was a group of people who met to explore 'how best to apply the techniques of folk-music and drama to the folk revival' under the direction of Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, with some participation from Bert Lloyd and Charles Parker. Running for eight years from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, it was not a conventional musical group or band as it had no permanent line-up. Members would perform with each other on an ad-hoc basis as situations demanded.
The group started out as a study group for singers, meeting once a week at MacColl and Seeger's home in Beckenham, attempting to raise the standards of singing. One of the main activities of the meetings was group criticism and discussion of each other's performances which subsequently earned the group its name, coined by Charles Parker when pressed for a name by a radio interviewer.[1]
Many of the meetings were recorded, and some of these recordings are held as part of the Charles Parker Archive in the Birmingham City Archive and Heritage Service.[2][3]
Festival of Fools, January 1972, New Merlins Cave, London
The group organised regular club nights at the Union Tavern in Kings Cross Road, which attracted musicians from all over the world. The best part of these evenings was often the 'lock-ins' which developed into impromptu musical sessions until the early hours of the morning. Under MacColl's writing and direction, and Seeger's musical direction, they went on to produce an annual show called the Festival of Fools, a satirical review of the previous year which always drew capacity audiences but attracted little attention from either national or niche folk music press. Staged each Christmas season for five years, they moved rapidly on three stages through sketches and songs, loosely based around folk customs. The shows, from 1966 on, were performed in the back room of a pub just up the road from the Union Tavern, the New Merlin's Cave, since demolished. Members of the group built sets, made props and costumes, rigged sound and light systems, managed front of house, acted, sang and played, all while holding daytime jobs.[4]
The group released a number of recordings on the Argo label. Performing members hosted and sang at weekly Club evenings, started touring the UK, recording and acquiring a following of their own. Throughout their existence they were heavily involved in left wing politics, performing at trade union functions, rallies, picket lines, benefits and especially anti-Vietnam war events. At MacColl's instigation, members formed a sub-group for the purpose of creating and transmitting radio programmes to Vietnam, aimed at the thousands of GIs who were already questioning why they were there in the first place.[4] From 1970 to 1972 four programmes, all called "Off Limits" were made. They were produced by Charles Parker, adapting the celebrated Radio Ballad docu-drama form on which he had collaborated with MacColl an Seeger. The programmes were allegedly sent to Vietnam through the North Vietnamese Charge D'Affaires and acknowledged by Ho Chi Minh himself. In 2016 the Australian Broadcasting Company transmitted a documentary by producer Gary Bryson, who had worked with Parker, telling the story of these forgotten programmes and the people who made them.
Critics and Combine members attend Vietnam Victory celebration in 1975l to r rear: Vietnam officer, Maggie Ives, Alan Ives, John Faulkner, Richard Humm, Ron Elliot, ?front: Dolores Keane, Pete Cobley, Mme Van Ngoc, Lai Van Ngoc, Sandra Kerr, Rita? Photo: Jack Warshaw
The last edition of the Festival of Fools took place in January and February 1972. At the end of the run the principal performing members of the Critics Group broke away from MacColl's leadership and formed the left-wing theatre group Combine, which produced weekly events in an east London pub, the Knave of Clubs. They created songs, plays and other events in a similar manner to the Critics, culminating in the Vietnam Victory Show of April 1975 which celebrated the final liberation of Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City.
As revealed in privately held recordings of Critics Group meetings (as discussed in a 2012 BBC radio programme presented by Martin Carthy[5]), Ewan MacColl had developed strong views about the skill required to learn and perform folksongs, the extensive untapped range of the repertoire, composing new songs and how to sing them. Eventually MacColl sought to diversify the group, adding a theatre arm which he saw as a semi-autonomous and full-time, breaking the bounds of established theatre in the way he considered Theatre Workshop from which he had split more than a decade earlier had failed to achieve. But the theatre group members did not share that vision. MacColl's disappointment and the resulting animosity is what led to the split. Despite this, Critics Group members continued to perform at the Singers Club within a programme contrived to avoid contact with MacColl and Seeger into the next decade. Carthy's conclusion is that despite all of his flaws, MacColl made an enormous contribution to the UK folk revival, bringing professional discipline into the art of folk singing which endures amongst many of the original members and their descendants.
In 2016, 2017 and 2019, surviving Group members held reunions in London. The 2017 session, joined by Peggy Seeger included Jim and Sal O'Connor, Frankie Armstrong, Brian Pearson, Sandra Kerr, Richard Humm and Jack Warshaw. There was talk of planning a revival concert, but no further news has emerged.
Discography
Poetry and Song, Volumes 1–14 1966/7 Argo ZDA 50 – ZDA 63 (For use in secondary schools (11–16 years), edited by James Gibson and recorded in association with MacMillan & Co. Ltd.)
A Merry Progress To London: An Anthology of London Songs (1966) Argo ZDA 46
Sweet Thames Flow Softly (1967) Argo ZDA 47 (John Faulkner, Sandra Kerr, Terry Yarnell, Ted Culver and Jim O'Connor)
Waterloo:Peterloo 1968 Argo ZFB 68 (Frankie Armstrong, John Faulkner, Brian Pearson, Denis Turner and Terry Yarnell with Sandra Kerr, Jim O'Connor and Peggy Seeger)
The Female Frolic 1968 Argo ZDA 82
As We Were a'Sailing 1970 Argo ZDA 137
Living Folk 1970 Albatros VPA 8093 (recorded 24 April 1968, Teatro Lirico, Milan, Italy) [billed as The London Critics Group]
James Henry Miller, better known by his stage name Ewan MacColl, was a British 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".
"Scarborough Fair" is a traditional English ballad. The song lists a number of impossible tasks given to a former lover who lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. The "Scarborough/Whittingham Fair" variant was most common in Yorkshire and Northumbria, where it was sung to various melodies, often using Dorian mode, with refrains resembling "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" and "Then she'll be a true love of mine." It appears in Traditional Tunes by Frank Kidson published in 1891, who claims to have collected it from Whitby.
The radio ballad is an audio documentary format created by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, and Charles Parker in 1958. It combines four elements of sound: songs, instrumental music, sound effects, and, most importantly, the recorded voices of those who are the subjects of the documentary. The latter element was revolutionary; previous radio documentaries had used either professional voice actors or prepared scripts.
Luke Kelly was an Irish singer, folk musician and actor from Dublin, Ireland. Born into a working-class household in Dublin city, Kelly moved to England in his late teens and by his early 20s had become involved in a folk music revival. Returning to Dublin in the 1960s, he is noted as a founding member of the band The Dubliners in 1962. Known for his distinctive singing style, and sometimes political messages, the Irish Post and other commentators have regarded Kelly as one of Ireland's greatest folk singers.
Argo Records is a record label founded by Harley Usill and Cyril Clarke in 1951 with the intention of recording "British music played by British artists", but the company's releases expanded to include spoken word recordings and other projects.
Martin Carthy is the debut solo album by English folk musician Martin Carthy, originally released in 1965 by Fontana Records and later re-issued by Topic Records. The album features Dave Swarbrick playing fiddle or mandolin on a number of the tracks. Swarbrick was not headlined on the album for contractual reasons as he was with the Ian Campbell Folk Group at the time with permission granted by Transatlantic Records.
Frankie Armstrong is an English singer and voice teacher. She has worked as a singer in the folk scene and the women's movement and as a trainer in social and youth work. Her repertoire ranges from traditional ballads to music-hall and contemporary songs, often focusing on the lives of women.
Margaret "Peggy" Seeger is an American folk singer and songwriter. She has lived in Britain for more than 60 years, and was married to the singer and songwriter Ewan MacColl until his death in 1989.
Mike Seeger was an American folk musician and folklorist. He was a distinctive singer and an accomplished musician who played autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, guitar, mouth harp, mandolin, dobro, jaw harp, and pan pipes. Seeger, a half-brother of Pete Seeger, produced more than 30 documentary recordings, and performed in more than 40 other recordings. He desired to make known the caretakers of culture that inspired and taught him.
Isla Cameron was a Scottish-born, English-raised actress and singer. AllMusic noted that "Cameron was one of a quartet of key figures in England's postwar folk song revival – and to give a measure of her importance, the other three were Ewan MacColl, A. L. Lloyd, and Alan Lomax". She was a respected and popular folk music performer through the 1950s and early 60s as well as appearing in several films; she focused almost exclusively on her acting career from 1966 onwards. Cameron provided the singing voice for actress Julie Christie's part in the hit 1967 film version of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, but changed career direction and became a film researcher in the early 1970s before her early death in a domestic accident in 1980. One of the traditional songs in her repertoire, "Blackwaterside", recorded by Cameron in 1962, was subsequently popularised by notable "next generation" U.K. folk music performers Anne Briggs, Bert Jansch and Sandy Denny.
Banner Theatre is a community theatre company based in Birmingham, England. The theatre was founded in 1974.
Charles Parker (1919–1980) was a Bournemouth born, BBC Radio producer based in Birmingham from 1954-1972, who specialised in Documentary Radio and Theatre. In particular, he is remembered for his collaboration with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger on the 1958-1963 series of Radio Ballads, which won an Italia Prize for Radio Documentary in 1960 and is seen as a landmark of study in oral history.
Sandra Kerr is an English folk singer.
Philip Donnellan was an English documentary film-maker.
Nancy Kerr is an English folk musician and songwriter, specialising in the fiddle and singing. She is a Principal Lecturer in Folk Music at Newcastle University. She was the 2015 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards "Folk Singer of the Year".
Phil Colclough was an English contemporary folk singer and songwriter. His best known works, co-written with his wife, June Colclough, are "Song for Ireland" and "The Call and the Answer".
Jack Warshaw is an American folksinger, songwriter and musician, best known for his 1976 protest song "If They Come in the Morning," aka "No Time for Love." He moved to England in 1965 to start a career as an architect but stayed because the folk music scene and the Vietnam War intervened.
The Iron Muse (A Panorama of Industrial Folk Song) is the title of two albums released by Topic Records, the first as a 12-inch Long Play vinyl record released in 1963 and the other as a CD released in 1993.
Everything Changes is a 2014 album by American folk singer Peggy Seeger. It is Peggy's 22nd album and was released on September 1, 2014 by Signet Music.
Samuel James Larner was an English fisherman and traditional singer from Winterton-on-Sea, a fishing village in Norfolk, England. His life was the basis for Ewan MacColl's song The Shoals of Herring, and his songs continue to be recorded by revival singers.
References
↑ Peter Cox: Set into Song – Ewan MacColl, Charles Parker, Peggy Seeger and the Radio Ballads - Labatie Books (2008) - ISBN0955187710
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