Salut! Live

With that verse, one of six in his composition, The Apprentice’s Song, the late Ian Campbell captured elements of the learning process that greeted these young lads as they began to serve their time on the way to qualifying in their trades.

Campbell died aged 79 in 2012, a committed old leftwinger who drew inspiration from Ewan MacColl and A L Lloyd (“both Marxists and socialists”, he said approvingly).

He led the Ian Campbell Folk Group, which developed from the skiffle boom, and wrote several fine songs.

One, The Sun Is Shining, became an unofficial anthem of the ban-the-bomb movement. It really ought to have him brought him some money, too, from cover version royalties, but didn’t.

Although duly recorded by Simon and Garfunkel, it failed to make it on to their Wednesday Morning 3am album that sold eight million copies.

The group's own cover, of The Times They Are a-Changin', got to no 42 in the UK charts but was blown off stage by the rush-released Bob Dylan original.

The Apprentice's Song, set in a gas works, would never be a moneyspinner; Campbell was ruefully aware that all his record sales put together lagged behind what his sons managed with their debut album with UB40.

But it's an outstanding song, deserving of much better than the paltry few hundred views I saw on checking some YouTube clips of his group singing it in 1963 or the 1,000 or so drawn to the Johnstons' version.

Of the two, though my friend Bill Taylor may strongly disagree (he usually does), Ian Campbell's group sounds more dated. His was an excellent group of its time, massively influential in the folk revival. But the delivery feels wooden and while the Johnstons recorded their version only five years later, the robust and utterly compelling harmonies reveal a song that shows its age only in lyrics evoking the days when my town had its wagon works, Britain generally had manufacturing industry and people had jobs.

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