EBarnacle on Lady Hillary's machine:

One night, not long before his death, travelling through the night to Maine, I heard Stan being interviewed on the radio. He did this song and Barrett's Privateers. The impression I got from the way he sounded was that the short phrasing was largely a result of his need to breathe--He was the cap tain [breath] of the Nightingale [breath] 21 days from Clyde in coal [breath], etc.