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that every movement has three properties – weight, speed and direc- tion. Ewan was extremely creative in applying those techniques to vocal work – nobody else was doing that.”
The lessons of the 1960s have endured, and Sandra has applied those techniques to her work with folk choirs and with students on the Newcastle degree course. She has no truck with the idea that analysis takes the heart and soul out of the music: “It’s lazy nonsense – people analyse jazz, and musicians talk for hours about the tech- niques of Irish or Scots fiddlers or great guitarists. I love it; it’s cre- ative and people improve their singing.”
acColl’s contacts led to The Critics Group making a series of albums for Argo Records. “The first two were albums of London songs, involving a lot of research. Ewan and Peggy had a huge book and sound library and encouraged us to find material that no-one else was singing and which related to our own back- ground. It’s what I do with my own students now: encouraging them to sing songs that reflect their lives and backgrounds.” Fur- ther records followed, including two maritime song collections, Waterloo: Peterloo and The Female Frolic, and there was a duo album of Sandra and John Faulkner.
M
A major focus for The Critics Group was the annual Festival Of Fools in January, held every night for several weeks, involving the- atre, sketches, songs, poetry and music that drew on events from the previous year. The rehearsals and performances were a considerable commitment, and although Sandra and John, now married, were full-time performers, it was still exhausting.
One exciting opportunity for Sandra came with a trip to Cuba. They had performed at their scheduled concerts, but after MacColl and Seeger returned home, she and John stayed on for a few more weeks. While they were visiting a farm, the Cuban leader, Fidel Cas- tro, and his brother Raúl (now Cuba’s president) turned up in a Jeep and Sandra and John sang for them. Amusingly, when they told Ewan about this, he started telling an elaborated version of the story as if it had happened to him!
So in spite of Sandra’s praise for the opportunities presented by
Ewan MacColl’s generosity and support, she is under no illusions about his deficiencies. “He was not an easy man, but as someone said about Charles Parker, ‘What did easy ever produce?’ But he could be extremely harsh and quite vicious with his criticism, and sparing with his praise. He wasn’t good at constructive criticism and there was no question of him being criticised!”
The Critics Group broke up acrimoniously in 1972 – Ben Harker’s biography of MacColl, Class Act, gives a good account – and Sandra didn’t meet Ewan or Peggy again until MacColl’s 70th birthday events in 1986. She’s now reconciled with Peggy.
One of The Critics Group members was children’s author Michael Rosen who, while working for the BBC, used Sandra and John’s music on the 1972 children’s series, Sam On Boff’s Island. They were then recommended to Oliver Postgate who was developing a new chil- dren’s television programme – Bagpuss. Postgate loved the music and Sandra became Madeleine the Rag Doll and John, Gabriel the Toad. As Sandra now says, “Nothing in those programmes compromised our music”, which was all traditionally-based. Bagpuss was broadcast over and over again, and in 1999 was voted the best-loved children’s programme of all time. As a result, a CD of the music was released and Sandra and John (by then divorced), with Nancy and James, took the show on the road. At two of the concerts, there were no children in the audience – it was just adults reliving their childhood!
Bagpuss led to further radio work for children, especially Music
Box, aimed at under six-year-olds, for which Sandra wrote the scripts, chose the songs, sang them and presented the programmes. By now married to Northumbrian piper Ron Elliott, and looking after baby Nancy, Sandra concentrated on radio and television work, but when they moved to Northumberland in 1988, the BBC work dried up. But new opportunities arose, with the north-east folk development agen- cy Folkworks and eventually the folk degree. Sadly, Ron died in 1989.
“I was Folkworks’ go-to folk singer: weekend workouts, work- shops, summer schools – I did almost all of them for a number of years,” Sandra recalls. “Eddie Upton had been Gateshead’s folk artist-in-residence, and when that ended, I took over the Caedmon
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