Ewan MacColl's 100th Birthday Party

It is 100 years today since Ewan MacColl was born and a large amount of his family got together to celebrate his life and songs with a lot of other talented musicians. Everything was just brilliant. I don't want to single him out amongst the stellar talent but it was a stroke of genius to get Jarvis Cocker to sing The Battle Is Done With and even better to get him to duet with Norma Waterson on Dirty Old Town. I think the star of the show was really Chaim Tannenbaum, who I've never heard of before - but he's superb (I've googled him and he's the right-hand-man of the Wainwright-McGarrigles).

Here is everybody singing the finale (what else but) The Manchester Rambler - Calum and Neill MacColl, their sons and nephews and a spouse (I'm losing track here...) the aforementioned Chaim, Jarvis and Norma, her husband Martin Carthy and daughter Eliza, Paul Buchanan, Karine Polwart and Dick Gaughan. And possibly a couple more.

Ewan MacColl occupied quite a large part of my childhood and onwards, so I was singing along apart from the bits where I got a bit of a lump in my throat. I should have taken more hankies....