Ewan MacColl was a singer and an actor who played a significant role in the post-war British folk revival of the 1950s and 60s. He was also a radio narrator and producer. Together with the BBC producer, Charles Parker, and the American folk singer, Peggy Seeger, MacColl produced the BBC radio documentary called the Radio Ballads series, broadcasted annually between 1958 and 64. The Radio Ballads, using songs, instrumental music, sound effects, and the recorded voices of ordinary people, was an innovative new form of popular culture. The Big Hewer (1961), the fourth episode of the Radio Ballads, featured the life of coal miners through the folklore of the Big Hewer, a miner renowned for his strength and hard work. This legend was handed down in the mining community all over the British Isles, from generation to generation. Although the coal industry itself started to decline throughout the 1950s and 1960s, owing to the changes in the national energy strategy, The Big Hewer provided an explored miners’ pride in and bond with their communities, which were ultimately doomed to lose. By articulating the ideas and activities of the British Folk Revival that focused on coal-mining songs, this paper illuminates the process through which The Big Hewer developed into a new form of folk culture that wove the colliers’ stories of their tough life and their folklore into the medium of folk song.
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