“Probably most people these days would far prefer Jeannie Robertson’s version of any song to MacColl’s.”

If that were the case it would surely be reflected in record companies’ attempts to make money out of their recordings? Looking at what is listed on Amazon, probably these days the world’s greatest retailer and so as good a reflection of what people want to buy as any other source of data I could think of beyond a massive opinion poll, I could find twenty reissues on CD by Ewan MacColl since 2000, and only one by Jeannie Robertson, and I stopped halfway through the MacColl listings, though that was the total on all the Robertson pages. And I excluded compilations for both and the radio ballads for MacColl as that would have just increased the disparity.