"I would be cringing if hearing them live."
Walter was lionised as one of Britain's best singers, along with fellow East Anglains, Harry Cox nad Sam Larner
If you don't get his singing you don't get what traditional singing is about
Your Walter quotes are totally out-of -context and misleading
We spent twenty years recording him in minute detail and have Bill Leader's early recordings of him as well
Mike Yates spent a deal of time with him too and gave us some of his recordings
Walter was very precise on how he viewed folk songs, their importance and how they differed from other non-folk items in his repertoire
Now that National Sound Archive have decided to put our collection on line, I'm hoping they will include what he had to say as well as what he sung
One of the greatest gaps in our knowledge of the tradition is that we have litle idea of what the singers thought, which has led to all sorts of wild speculation, the most inaccurate being that because they sang every type of song they couldn't tell the difference between the different types
Walter would have been very amused (and confused) to see his 'When The Fields Were White With Daisies' being designated as a folk song and given a Roud number - he firmly stated that this type of song was not and said why - often at length.

Folk song is like every other artistic endeavour - you have to work at it to understand it and you have to understand it to like it - it is not superficial - good things never are

I hated Harry Cox's singing when I first heard it - now it never fails to move me and I never cease to find something new in it whenever I revisit it

"Over 600 posts, and nobody's saying anything new"
Pay attention, that girl !! :->
Jim