".....some detailed comments about what people like / dislike in a given recording."
Sheila McGregor/Stewart's Tiftie's Annie - in my opininion, one of the most sublime pieces of ballad singing ever - after over 40 years of listening it still brings a lump to the throat.
The clear, sharp tone of her singing cuts right to the heart of the tragedy encapsulated in the story and her clarity of diction..... don't get me started - can feel the lump in the throat already!!
The ballad itself is superb, basically a tragedy of family opposition to a young woman's suitor.
Story:
Miller's wife and daughter standing at the gate watching a local Laird's entourage passing. The mother admires the handsome herald (trumpeter), Andrew Lammie and the daughter says she has been secretly meeting him in the woods. The family are outraged by the fact that he is merely a servant, lock her in her room and try to dissuade her by belittling him.
When this fails the father writes to the Laird protesting the liason and has the servant sent away (more later).
The family begin to beat the girl, eventually killing her by breaking her back (on the Temple-stane of Fyvie).
All this and also a wonderful sub-text.
The ballad was current at the time when the nobilty were losing their influence to the new trades. A marraigeable daughter was a powerful asset to the well-being of an ambitious family and would be married off simply to increase the family wealth and influence = woman as commodity.
The miller writes to the Laird:

"And Tiftie's penned a long letter,
And sent it off to Fyvie
To say his daughter was bewitcherd
By the servant, Andrew Lammie".

Used always to equate "bewitched" with bothered and bewildered, but in fact he is being accused of influencing her by witchcraft and is sent off to Edinburgh to face trial for same. It's a great lesson on how easy it is to miss hidden information in a ballad.
The ballad is based on real people, Have seen the statue of the trumpeter on the ramparts of Fyvie Castle, the graves of the Miller and Annie in Fyvie Churchyard, and (can't verify this) but we were told that when they were excavating for the park below Princes Street in Edinburgh they discovered hundred of skeletons of witches that were drowned in the river there as a test.

Anyway - that's what I'd take on a desert island with me along with The Good Soldier Schweik (the book- I hasten to add - sorry Dick!) and Shakespeare - wouldn't bother too much with the Bible unless it was the King James one with the beautiful text.
Jim Carroll