I am not sure that either Topic or Fellside are in a position to give permission. The trouble is that the copyright issue here is even more complicated than usual.

To recap from memory. Riverside originally commissioned the LPs via Kenneth Goldstein. He then engaged MacColl and Lloyd to make the recordings. These were done by Topic in London and, although the masters were shipped off to Riverside, Topic retained the copyrights.

The LPs were released in 1956, so they are clearly out of copyright in Britain, but not in America. What nobody seems to know is whether Topic retained copyright in America or whether it was ceded to Riverside, and thus eventually to Concord, who nowadays own Riverside.

I discussed Dick's proposal with Tony Engle and Dick at the time of the Topic MacColl release, when there was still a need to get Lloyd's contribution back in the public domain. Tony was perfectly happy for Camsco to issue the balance of the recordings once the MacColl was airborne, but not the entire set. He may of course have changed his mind since, especially as the MacColl CDs have been out for about two years now.

However, any complete reissue in the near future would now come slap up against the Fellside release, which is truly magnificent and very affordable, and which deserves a decent sales run if ever anything did.

In any event, we now have a situation where about 4/5 of the set is available remastered and on CD. As I said earlier, most of the rest doesn't in my opinion justify CD reissue, and I was thinking more of making it available via the Internet for free; possibly via Soundcloud or some similar host.

A couple of other points to bear in mind.

Firstly, although the Fellside booklet acknowledges my assistance, as far as I remember all I did was to copy the Lloyd tracks onto CDR and send them to Paul Adams. In other words I want to make it clear that I have no vested interest in this project, beyond being glad that it's out there and wishing it every success, and hoping that similar goodies will come from Fellside in the future.

Secondly, I am a ballad enthusiast rather than a scholar and, when I took the Topic project on, I felt that Kenny Goldstein's original notes would be adequate for reprinting in the reissue booklet. Having seen the magnificent job which Vic Gammon has done in terms of writing new notes for the Fellside, I'm now wishing I'd thought otherwise.

In any event, Goldstein's notes are not included with the Fellside. Moreover, since neither the National Sound Archive nor the Vaughan Williams Memorial library has a complete set of the Riversides, they have become virtually inaccessible.

It would be useful therefore, if these could be made available via the Internet also.