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Barry Witherden, Author at Jazz Journal jazzjournal.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jazzjournal.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
GO in to any Irish pub from Aberdeen to Adelaide, Clydebank to Chicago or Dundee to Dunedin and it won’t be long before the haunting strains of Dirty Old Town waft out from the jukebox or sound system. The archetypal Irish ballad, you might think, and a hugely popular one at that, thanks to the efforts over the years of groups like the Clancy Brothers, the Dubliners and the Pogues. But Dirty Old Town wasn’t written about Dublin and it wasn’t written by an Irishman. It was the creation of proud and dedicated Scottish Independence supporter Ewan MacColl, who might have been born in the northern English industrial city of Salford but was Scottish through and through – a fact of life he never tired of emphasising. ....