Don,
Am confused - who are these 'acknowledged greats' I am referring to; I assumed you were talking about the source singers and responded accordingly. Sharp didn't record his source singers to any extent as far as we know; Grainger did, but most of his recordings are in such poor condition that as to render them unlistenable.
I think you will find that Sharp, if he was interested in his singers as singers, never passed on any of his findings to the wider world. His interest was in taking down their songs; we know very little about how his singers sang, nor what he thought of them as performers. This has remained the case with collecting and because of it we know almost nothing of the singing tradition from the point of view of the singers themselves.
It was not my intention to 'choose your reading matter for you' any more than I believe it was yours to choose my listening material when you wrote "listen sometime to the original source recordings of some of those," - we are passing on information (I hope in a friendly way, but that doesn't always work out).
Nor did I accuse you of adopting a 'near enough for folk' attitude; this is the theme of this, and many other similar threads and I was making a general point.
"I strongly suspect that any of those source singers who had turned up (had that been possible) at a folk club run by your good self, would indeed have been discouraged from coming again, because their ability was not up to your high standard."
Why should you suspect this? We collected songs from exactly the type of singer you described and took them around the clubs whenever we were asked to. The problem was not in getting them to sing, rather it was finding the clubs interested enough to book them. Pat, my wife arranged regular tours for Walter Pardon around the tiny, tiny circle of clubs who were interested enough to have him.
You appear to be making wild assumptions about me and my work based on ..... what???
"Fortunately the collectors had more time, tolerance, and patience."
I hope you include me in that comment - I have been a collector for thirty six years, which would make it around ten years longer than you have been around the folk scene - but who's counting.
Now finally - don't want to go on too long - what are my high standards?
I have suggested that a singer should have done enough work beforehand to at least remember the words, sing in tune and have enough understanding of the text to be able to give an interpretation.
Is that too much to ask or isn't our music worth even that small effort?
Finally, finally - you might have read Shela Stewart's 'Queen Amang The Heather'. but I don't know where you will have read what Walter Pardon, Tom Lenihan or Mary Delaney had to say on the subject as they are all lying on the shelves of the British Library as part of our unpublished (apart from a a miniscule bit of Walter here and there) collection .
Jim Carroll
PS Not ignoring your comments Rosie, but this is far too long as it is - will respond later.