Alex Campbell

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Alex Campbell (born April 27, 1925 in Glasgow , † January 3, 1987 in Denmark ) was a Scottish folk singer.

Campbell made a significant contribution to the development of British folk music in the 1950s and 1960s. On extensive tours through Britain and Europe and earned the nickname "Big Daddy of Folk". With around 100 long-playing records, Campbell is one of the most frequently published singers in English-language folk music, alongside Pete Seeger and Ewan McColl .

Life

Alex Campbell was born in Glasgow in 1925 to a family from the Hebrides. Both parents and his two sisters died of tuberculosis that same year, according to official figures. Campbell spent some time in an orphanage before his grandparents took him in. He attended the prestigious Woodside High School. Since studying was hardly an option for him as a child from a humble background, he began a career in the public service after graduating from school in London, which he soon left because of a violent argument with an older colleague. With the savings from this employment relationship he began to travel and he also enrolled as a student at the Paris Sorbonne. The money was quickly spent, however, and Alex started making a living busking in the Latin Quarter. Together with the American folk musicians Derroll Adams and Ramblin 'Jack Elliott , he laid the foundations for the revival of folk music in Europe. To this end, he regularly returned to Great Britain in the 1950s, where he met Alexis Korner and 10 years older than Ewan MacColl , with whom he played a key role in the folk revival in London. Despite their friendship, the two represented different artistic approaches in folk music. While MacColl took the purist position that people should only sing the music of their own homeland, Campbell sang what he liked from his extensive repertoire: Scottish ballads, English folk songs, North American workers' songs. According to a contemporary article in the weekly newspaper "The Observer", the world of folk music was divided into the two camps of the "MacCollites" and the "Campbellites". In 1956 the American folk singer Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl (who was still married to Jean Newlove) fell in love. When Peggy's British work permit expired in 1958, her passport was confiscated and she was threatened with deportation, Campbell agreed to a marriage of convenience and married the heavily pregnant Peggy Seeger in Paris in January 1959 with Derroll Adams as best man. The next day he brought Peggy back to London, who had lived with MacColl for more than 30 years. Campbell and his future wife Patricia founded a family with two sons in Paris. Between 1960 and 1967 Alex Campbell toured the folk clubs of Great Britain. Later the focus of his tours shifted to Germany and Scandinavia. He was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx in the early 1980s. He could hardly speak at that time, almost not sing, and he could hardly believe that anyone would ever remember what an excellent singer he had been. He spent his last years in Denmark, first in Skagen, then in Tønder. Alex Campbell died on January 3, 1987 at the age of 61.

Albums (selection)

  • Traditional Ballads Of Scotland (1977)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ heupferd-musik.de
  2. ↑ Harper, Colin (2006). Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British Folk and Blues Revival (2006 edition). 100. Bloomsbury. ISBN 0-7475-8725-6
  3. ↑ Peggy Seeger at http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/stars-remember-alex-campbell-legend-3223399
  4. ↑ Allistar Campbell in https://sites.google.com/site/alexcampbellfolksinger/
personal data
SURNAME Campbell, Alex
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish folk singer
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Glasgow
DATE OF DEATH 3rd January 1987
Place of death Denmark