Rod Stradling has just put this out:

Re: The Willett Family CDs - an apology
Every year I get email notifications of the WOMEX events, and friends like Ian Anderson and Ben Mandelson extol the virtues of the 'networking' opportunities they provide. I have never bothered - having neither the time nor the money involved, and thinking that it would be extremely unlikely that there might be anyone there with a record company like mine. I would guess that Paul Marsh, of Forest Tracks Records, may have felt much the same. A pity, really ... since our attendance might have avoided a highly improbable and extremely embarrassing faux pas for both of us.
Because we have both released essentially the same double CD in the past month - without either of us being aware of it! Yes, both Forest Tracks and MT Records have just released double CDs of The Willett Family, from the recordings made by Ken Stubbs in the 1950s. Both are presented in DVD cases together with substantial booklets.

This is not the place to go into the details of how this happened - a lack of communication, stretching right back to the '70s and '80s, and running seamlessly right on to 20013. Suffice it to say that both of us were horrified to discover, just this week, that this had happened, and that we were, individually, completely unaware of the other's work on these releases. Nor were we capable of understanding how it had happened until we were able to compare notes on the processes that led up to our publications.

You may be able to imagine how we felt - and how we do feel about the possibility of both sets of CDs being reviewed in the same publications! Paul Marsh joins me in apologising to our respective customers, and to everybody else who'll be having a great laugh about this ... we suppose we deserve it!

However, what doesn't deserve it are the two splendid double CDs of some of the greatest English Gypsy singing ever recorded. We hope that you will buy a copy of one or the other of them.

Rod Stradling and Paul Marsh - 27.10.13

I suppose that I will have to get both sets, because there are a few different tracks on each set. But I will not be laughing at Rod or Paul. Sadly, these thing happen and I can only hope that it won't stop either of them issuing similar material in the future. They deserve support, not derision.