The disc arrived this morning and I'm extremely disappointed. Like the earlier reissue, which I hadn't previously known about, this is a CDR, not a CD. The sound quality is atrocious. There's not much surface noise, but it sounds like it's been recorded using a old tin bucket for an echo chamber.

On top of that there are no sleeve notes and the package doesn't even include an inlay card.

Ok., Fair enough. One could argue that Musical Traditions releases are home produced on CDRs' but Rod Stradling's work is priceless compared to this.

Ah well. Once shit on, twice pass by.

I agree with Thomas. There's a large stack of recordings of traditional singers in the old Riverside and Prestige catalogues. They deserve to be re-released to a standard which at least compares with, or better still, surpasses, the qaulity of the originals.

If anyone wants to know what can be done with LPs of that age, take a look at Fellside's Bramble Briars & Beams of the Sun by A.L. Lloyd, or Topic's Ballads by Ewan MacColl.

Both come from the 9 LP set of Child Ballads which MacColl and Lloyd recorded for Riverside in the mid 1950s. I can't speak for Fellside, except to say that it's a marvellous production. However, I was responsible for producing the MacColl Topic release, and I can vouch for the atrocious condition the LPs were in before Topic's engineer got to work on them.

Is Jeannie Robertson worthy of any lesser consideration?