"there are no fortunes to be made out of folk songs, there never has been and there never will be."

Sadly, Jim, some people do not believe this to be true. In the 1970's I was recording songs from two Sussex singers, George Spicer and Harry Upton. They knew each other and there was clearly some sort of rivalry betyween them when it came to singing. I included a small number of Harry's songs on two Topic anthologies. But Topic had already issued a solo album of George Spicer and Harry was a bit miffed about this.

In late 1977/early '78 I was asked to write an article for the (then) new magazine "Musical Traditions". I chose to write about Harry. I mentioned this to Tony Engle at Topic and Tony suggested that they issue an album of Harry to go with the article. But, they could only issue it if it was limited to 250 copies. Money was tight and so I incorporated the album's notes into the article, thus saving Topic money because they did not having to pay for the type-setting.

I explained all this to Harry, telling him that it was our way of thanking him for singing and for passing on his songs to us all. I clearly said that only 250 copies would be pressed and that this was not a money-making project. I guess that, at the end of the day, Topic might have, financially, broken even, or actually made a small loss.

The album came out and I took a couple of copies down to Harry, who was very happy with things. But then Topic received a letter from Harry's son - who I had never met. It was demanding a large sum of money. I went down to Sussex and spoke to the son. Sadly, he was of the opinion that thousands of albums were being sold and that, like pop singers, his father would make a huge amount of money. I tried my best to explain the situation, but I doubt that he believed me.

It was a sad end to what had initially been a good idea - namely issuing the album as a tribute to his father. I still find the whole thing upsetting and have often asked myself whether or not we should ever have issued the album.(And I am now mentioning this because Musical Traditions have recently asked if they can reissue the album. What to do?)

Reading the comments about other traditional singers on this thread has reminded me of just how easy it is to confuse people. Vic Smith is right when he says that there is a confusion between the terms "culturally valuable" and "financially valuable". I suppose that, over the years, I have always been looking out for that which was "culturally valuable", and that I may not have been clear enough about this to some other people.