Devised by Ewan MacColl, radio producer Charles Parker & Peggy Seeger, the "Radio-Ballads" series set out to crystallise in words & music the experience of different ways of life - the words being supplied not by actors but by the real occupants of those lives & jobs, whether miners, fishermen, boxers or teenagers. The 8 programs were first broadcast by the BBC from 1958-64. 6 of them were subsequently issued on LP but have been unavailable since the early '80s. Volume 1 was inspired by a steam locomotive driver who died performing an act of heroism. It was based, like its successors, on many hours of tape-recorded testimonies & reminiscences, mixed into a continuous narrative interspersed with MacColl's songs & Seeger's music.