Jim,
I owe you an apology I must admit that I was absolutely ignorant of the place of the 5 string banjo in the Scottish tradition as used on the recording under discussion.

Questions: Were you ever at the Ballads and Blues club when Ewan and Peggy were the main performers? and when did you hear anyone from the Ballads & Blues organisers Malcolm Nixon and Pete Turner state that it's policy was the same as that of Ewan and Peggy. That policy of Ewan's was one reason why they set up their own club The Singers. We at the Ballads and Blues carried on with the same policy that had existed there for a number of years.
You blame Alan Lomax for instigating the Americanisation of the revival, but I seem to remember that Ewan and his then wife Joan Littlewood embraced his work at Stratford East and that Ewan and Peggy sang in his skiffle group.
The interest in American folk/country music had long been in existence over here before Lomax arrived. My own parents were among many who had recordings of Jimmie Rogers, Carson Robison et al in the thirties and during the war there were regular broadcasts of country music by Big Bill Campbell. Plus the 1944 BBC broadcast of The Martins and the Coys which featured Guthrie, Ives, Ledford, Seeger and Fiddling Arthur Smith. The WW2 propaganda broadcast of course was produced in New York by Alan Lomax so I guess he could take a little of the blame for introducing some of us to some great music. I personally feel that the bulk of the Ballads and Blues Club audience in the beginning were more attracted by the American material and that the interest in the UK tradition grew from some of that audience and it was those people that drifted off to the The Singer's Club and the club run by the late Jill Cook. That being the case then Lomax was responsible too for helping to nurture the interst in British traditions with a little help of course from The Ballads and Blues club who regularly put on people such as Sam Larner, Harry Cox and Bob and Ron Copper.

Hoot