"Steamin' Willie" was the moniker Ron Howard used. Ron is no longer with us and Mandy, his wife, gave me his piles and piles of 1/4" tapes and cassettes of interviews and recordings, many of which I was involved with. I don't think I was with him when he interviewed Fred Jordan although I was at the festival, I recall. (Yet I don't know which festival! All a blur.). Tom and Bertha were there too and Tom introduced Ron to lots of singers for him to interview. Who knows? Fred might be singing it in a box in my attic.... I do know he sang his "catch you out" version of Grandfather's Clock. Don't ask me how I know that. Ron must have mentioned it and like some shopping lists, has stayed in my memory. Fred didn't just sing songs he learned as a boy from local tradition so this song may have appealed to him in the same way as Tom's Mum's pickled knee? Just a fond thought.
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