Roy Harris just pointed me to the existence of this thread and urged that I get into it.
I hardly know where to start. I met Jack first in 1965 at Pinewoods Camp, had a transformative experience triggered by Jack at Pinewoods in 1966, I became his accompanist for folk song concerts in 1970 until his last time at Pinewoods in 2005. He died in December of that year a few days short of his 85th birthday.

Jack brought me into the Revels sometime in the mid 1970s for a performance in Washington that was a benefit for the Potomac School, which was run earlier by Carol Preston, who in turn had gotten Jack into contact with real traditional music in the Carolina mountains when Jack was 13 (1934). Carol Preston is the most important person in the revival that no one has ever heard of. And it all happened by cosmic accident. Not enough space to tell it all here. I became Music Director when the Revels came to New York in 1979 and remained so for 15 years. I am quite proud of the gobs of musical arrangements I wrote for the Revels, many of which can be heard on the Revels recordings Barry has guided you to. A bunch more are available on Jack's last recording, for Minstrel Records, which I think is his best (ok, I am prejudiced). Check out
www.minstrelrecords.com/langstaff

Jack's evolution as a singer is very interesting to see and is quite apparent in comapring recordings from the early days to the later one. Jack and I talked about the issues involved dozens of times. A lot of it had to do with the handling of words and diction -- getting past in some ways some conservatory training.
But Jack always had a stunning instinct for narrative and timing, as good as any source singer in my opinion, and I have not the slightest doubt that his singing was dramatically affected for the better because he was a dancer.

He was taken later that same summer of 1934 to Pinewoods by Carol Preston and learned Morris and Sword dancing, the Abbott's Bromley Horn Dance (all nearly always included in a Christmas Revels), English and American country, contra, square dancing. He moved wonderfully, right up to his last days. And he sang that way. The connections with May Gadd, Douglas Kennedy, Vaughan Williams, Percy Grainger (who also danced morris in New York), Lily Roberts Conant, Peter Kennedy, Pat Shaw, so many more. . . . it is a magnificent history. Talk about boundless respect for the real source singers, no one had that more than Jack, even on a par with the great Roy Harris. And they both shared the desire to present the sources to a wider public, not out of some sense of duty, but because they really understood.

It was a dream of mine to have Jack and Roy meet. It never happened, though we have established that they were on the same airplane once, going back to London.

Jack sang at the 1958 celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Folk Song Society at Cecil Sharp House, with Bob Copper (and Ron) (Vaughan Williams cut the cake). I was able to bring them back together for a celebration of the 100th anniversary in New York in 1999. Bob was the keynote speaker and Jack introduced him. They had not met in between.

Jack read from a copy that his father had saved of Volume 1 of the Journal of the Folk Song Society, where Kate Lee writes of the first collecting from Bob Copper's grandfather and great uncle. Just stunning that Jack had that copy and brought it to NY to read back to Bob!

It is all too much for me, and I have to stop myself. . . . . .

There was a packed memorial in Cambridge (MA) in March of 2006, and we had a "Revels-like" memorial for him in New York in September of 2006. If anyone would like to receive my words from the memorial, please write to me off the board:
jerepst@att.net

I believe, and I can make a strong case, that Jack was the most important connection to the first generation of the revival, probably along with Pete Seeger. Though they were very different, particularly in their involvement with the political side of things, they knew each other well and sang together on several occasions I was at, one being a memorial to the great collector and singer Frank Warner (1980 I think).

Jack's name is well known to children's librarians. I think it is a mistake to assume that his legacy is primarily in the Revels. But this is a whole other subject for another time.

Jerry Epstein