page_title: Ralph McTell
section_title: Busking
hierarchical_section_title: Ralph McTell / Biography / Busking
caption_attribution_description: Ralph McTell holding a poster advertising a 1970s concert in Launceston photographed in 2006.
context_page_description: Ralph McTell is an English singer-songwriter and acoustic guitar player who has been an influential figure on the UK folk music scene since the 1960s.
  McTell is best known for his song "Streets of London", which has been covered by over two hundred artists around the world, and for his tale of Irish emigration, "From Clare to Here".
  In the 1980s he wrote and played songs for two TV children's programmes, Alphabet Zoo, which also featured Nerys Hughes, followed by Tickle on the Tum, featuring Jaqui Reddin. Albums were also released from both series. He also recorded Keith Hopwood's and Malcolm Rowe's theme song to Cosgrove Hall's adaptation of The Wind in the Willows, and this was released as a single in 1984 after the series was aired on ITV.
  McTell's guitar playing has been modelled on the style of the US's country blues guitar players of the early 20th century, including Blind Blake, Robert Johnson and Blind Willie McTell. These influences led a friend to suggest that he change his professional name to McTell as his career was beginning to take shape.
  McTell is also an accomplished performer on piano and harmonica, which he uses on a harness.
context_section_description: By now, McTell had begun travelling abroad, busking around Europe with his guitar. He spent time in France and visited Belgium and Germany. Other trips took him to Italy and through Yugoslavia ("I felt a madness there, even then") to Greece.
  Paris was a city that McTell revisited frequently. Late in 1965 he and a friend from Croydon took a room in a cheap hotel on the Left Bank, earning their rent by busking cinema queues. After braving a bitterly cold Paris winter, McTell met a young American, Gary Petersen, who had studied with the legendary guitarist Reverend Gary Davis. "There was a great anticipation every time I got to play with (Petersen)", McTell recalled. "Each time I learned something new, and through him I learned how to play ragtime properly."
  In 1966, McTell met another émigré to Paris, a student from Norway named Nanna Stein. The pair soon became inseparable. Back in England, they lived in a caravan in Cornwall. McTell and Wizz Jones were regular performers on the Cornish circuit, especially at The Folk Cottage in Mitchell. It was Jones who suggested the stage name "McTell", "after Blind Willie McTell, whose 'Statesboro Blues' we both loved".
  Cornwall captured McTell's heart – a place whose "unique spirit got to me" – and the county has always remained a place for him to retreat to. By the end of 1966, he and Stein were expecting their first child. They married on 30 November in Norway and returned to live in Croydon with Winifred. Their son, Sam, was born on 21 January 1967.
  After an unrewarding spell at teacher training college, McTell decided he had to try to make it full-time in music. As well as his vocal and instrumental talents, he was developing as a songwriter and was in demand in folk clubs and festivals.
caption: Cornwall connection – McTell photographed in 2006 holding a poster advertising a late-1960s concert in Launceston
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