Jim, you wrote
Listening to Nic Jones again brought back all the memories of self-indulgence and lack of of any interpretation that related to the contents of the song - a pleasant blandness and total lack of emotional tension.
Jones follows the accompaniment rather than making it a canvas on which to paint your song
You could go to downstairs for a pint and a pee in the time his musical runs take - at least a quarter of the whole song - ridiculous!
Instead of running lines together where the plot calls for it, he leaves gaps in the action - he almost makes it an eight line poetic structure rather than a four like one - one word strikes me in listening to his singing - "gappy"
I am not against accompaniment by any means - when I was singing regularly well over half of my large repertoire was accompanied"
       so you are judging him on material from 36 years ago, yet you say peggys bad accompaniment is excusable because it was 36 plus years ago.
I repeat one rule for peggy another for nic jones