The Slipped Disc daily comfort zone (5)
mainOriginally part of the folk revolution (see below), Ewen MacColl’s song for his lover Peggy Seeger was elevated by Roberta Flack into another zone – not just by her vocal interpretation but by her singing.
I used to wake up to Roberta’s voice every morning in the early 1970s.
Compare to the original, wonderful as it is:
These consolation segments may have to remain a regular feature of this site in the foreseeable future. It is looking likely that this crisis may last longer than a year, most likely up to two years. A vaccine they say is one and a half years away. When it is over we will have to not so much as rebuild as reinvent our world. All will be in rubbles.
It won’t last two years: there is no way we can stay in lock-down that long.
This is the version you want:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqW-eO3jTVU
I was just about to post this link as well. Flack’s debut album IIRC.
Discovering this. Didn’t know Peggy Seeger, thank you, Norman. She’s of course the daughter of modernist composer Ruth Crawford-Seeger.
What a great choice of song Norman. I knew Ewan and Peggy and used to attend their folk club every week. Ewan wrote this song for Peggy for a competition in America and sung it over the telephone to her after writing it in 2 days! Peggy said he never sang it again he said “ it’s your song now” it’s been recorded over 100 times and Ewan said it made him more money than all his other songs put together! Peggy recently sold the advertising rights for £12000!!
A song to follow up is Ewan’s last song “ The Joy of Living” written at the foot of a mountain in Loch Torridon when he realised he couldn’t climb it any more, and while Peggy and his son Calum climbed it he wrote this farewell to his family and life. It is often used at my friends funerals and I can give you a fine version by my friend Cabbie Drennan who was a student of Ewan and Peggy
Hugh Kerr editor of the Edinburgh Music Review (which covers folk music as well as classical music and opera.)
One of my Desret Island discs, Flack great. Thanks Norman.
I like Peter, Paul & Mary’s version as well, but Flack’s vocal work is outstanding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6x3mRbZo3k