"But they didn't include extensive learned notes,"
As far as the albums I had access to - the sea albums, at least, the ones I had didn't have e. l. n.
The Topic sea albums came with a folded foolscap sheet.
I know Goldstein did most of the Stinson notes for the later MacColl albums; I never saw the earlier ones, but I understood they came with little more than a sentence of notes for each item.
The ballad series were different, as far as I am able to make out I could see no problem with them and I never really had any dispute with what they put forward - whoever did the notes (they were uncredited; I always assumed that they were by Goldstein).
The three early albums of sea material I do have are - A Sailord Garland (notes by Lloyd), Blow Boys Blow (notes by Lloyd) and Whaler Out of New Bedfotd (uncredited)
The point I'm making is that whereas Lloyd was acknowledged as a scholar MacColl was not.
One of my greatest gripes with MacColl, a point I made when I gave a talk on the Critics Group at the symposium for his 70th birthday, was that, apart from sleeve notes, he never set anything his ideas and opinions down on paper.   
Perhaps if we could look at which particular mis-statements on the sea songs, it might clear up what is being discussed here.
Jim Carroll