I have been following this thread with growing fascination and what has struck me most is the difference in attitude between that of most of the contributors and virtually all the traditional singers it has been my good fortune to meet and record
Wherever we went we were struck with the breathtaking generosity of people who were more than happy to pass on their songs in order to ascertain that they did not die - here, it seems, we are little short of having burglar alarms and guard dogs (not to mention copyright laws) in order to ascertain that performers are not 'ripped off'. Is the singing of folk-songs really so lucrative to require such lengths?
We decided when we started collecting back in the seventies that we would make our collection as available as possible, so we deposited it in the (then) British Institute of Recorded Sound in order to facilitate this. The only restrictions we place were those few requested by our informants (usually very personal information).
Anything we have acheived over the last thirty odd years has been entirely due to generosity (often of people living on or below the breadline).
We have tried to adopt an attitude beautifully summed up by Walter Pardon when, on hearing two folk 'superstars' squabbling over who should record one of his songs, "they're not mine, they're everybody's".
We have been involved in the production of about half-a-dozen albums of field recordings and I find myself totally in agreement with Matt Keen when he writes "Finally, I personally would love it if there were hundreds of extra people out their listening to my stuff!"
We are at present working to set up a local archive of field recordings and our ultimate aim is to make as much as possible available on line. Perhaps we are being a trifle hasty - please advise.
Jim Carroll