A thought or two about Alex, for Jim McLean in particular.

Jim, you wrote:

"To talk about him in a sense of Folk revival is at the best naive and at the worst purely ignorant. The revival was well on its way in Scotland (and England) by the time Alex got involved."

Sorry, but I think you've missed the point I was trying to make. Sure, Alex didn't start the '60s folk revival – a lot of other people were around before he made an impact on the scene. And sure, there were singers, instrumentalists, and songwriters on the circuit who were technically more accomplished. But in certain very important things he surpassed everyone else I heard during that era.

Firstly, he was a great communicator. Alex could reach out to people of all ages, kinds and categories - highbrows, lowbrows or no-brows - and make them feel, for an hour or so, that they were part of one big family, having fun together.   None of the pioneering figures of the revival was so good at winning over the unconverted, and sending them home from their first visit to a folk club determined to come back the following week. That's why many organisers of fledgling clubs chose Alex as the guest performer for their opening night.

Secondly, he was a gifted interpreter, with a genius for seeing into the emotional heart of a song, and making it accessible to everyone in his audience. Alex could deliver a song he'd learned only the day before as if he had known it inside out for years. And he could take a song that he (and some of us in the audience) had heard many times before, and still make it sound fresh and exciting.

Thirdly, he was a great educator. He always credited the sources for the songs he sang, and many of us got our first introduction to traditional performers like Jeannie Robertson and Jimmie MacBeath, and to contemporary songwriters like Cyril Tawney and Tom Paxton, because Alex recommended them to us.

It's true that Alex didn't make the revival happen single-handed: but without him, I believe, it would have taken a very different course. If we had a few more entertainers like him around today, there would be less reason for the anxieties about the future of the folk movement which appear so frequently in this forum.

Wassail!