Ewan MacColl & Charles Parker - The Ballad of John Axon (1965 LP)

This is the complete 1965 LP The Ballad of John Axon by Ewan MacColl & Charles Parker, with orchestration and music direction by Peggy Seeger.
The LP version includes no track listing. However, the CD reissue in 1999 included a descriptive track listing, though it doesn't quite match up with the LP.

1 - John Axon Was A Railway Man...
2 - It Was 4 A.M. That Saturday...
3 - The Iron Road Is A Hard Road...
4 - It Doesn't Matter Where You Come From..
5 - The Rain Was Gently Falling...
6 - Come All You British Loco Men...
7 - The Repair Was Done...
8 - I May Be A Wage Slave On Monday...
9 - Come All You Young Maidens...
10 - Steam Train, Steam Train...
11 - Under The Large Injector Steam-Valve...
12 - The Engine Had Reached The Distant Signal...
13 - On The 3rd Of May 1957...

A remarkable and unique musical document of the life and death of the railwayman John Axon, who died in a train collision in February 1957. Originally commissioned by the BBC and recorded only a few months after the accident, the record combines field recordings of the railway industry and community in which Axon lived and worked, alongside original music and testimony from Axon's friends and family. Although certainly not concrete music - in the sense Pierre Schaeffer would describe it - the record nevertheless sits adjacent to that pioneering period when the possibilities of tape recorded sound were being explored, in particular in France, Germany and the United States. Luc Ferrari's anecdotal music is one form that comes to mind when listening to the combination of first person narrative - or what the producers have called in the booklet "actualities" - and field recordings of trains and scenes from the Yorkshire community that Axon lived. Ferrari was also a noted producer of radio plays (Hörspiele).

Is it art, documentary, folk narrative, or something completely different? It's a stark reminder of the kind of original and path-finding work the BBC used to undertake before it collapsed into lowest common denominator dumbed-down mass entertainment. It's also a reminder of a time when they used to take working class people and their lives seriously.

For staying with his train under appalling conditions to try to bring it under control, Axon was awarded a posthumous George Cross, a fact revealed at the end of this record. The award and the BBC's exploration of his life and death are a level of official recognition of the bravery of ordinary workers which happens all too infrequently nowadays.