Catching up - not in any way intending to reopen any squabbles - just picking up on a couple of points which appear to be beyond his comprehension.
Lloyd, MacColl, the Critics Group.... and everybody else I ever met involved in workshops, folk clubs, concerts, standing up in front of large (even medium-sized) audiences made of largely strangers and attempting to handle large repertoires covering the whole spectrum of folk song repertoire and styles - none of these were traditional singers and all were facing very facing a very different situation of that faced by Sam Larner, Harry cox - et al.
Those of the older singers who had sizeable repertoires of wide ranging songs demanding different approaches tended to sing them all within a very limited range of abilities and styles
That singers like Bert Lloyd used his 'grin' to produce a hard tone while traditional singers like Harry Cox didn't it totally immaterial and to raise it here is destructive to any form of helpful discussion - I never met a traditional singer who attended a workshop, a lecture, or sought the services of a diction coach - all the things the individual who described bert's 'grin' as trying to "I would advise against doing this [unless you want to sound like bert lloyd]"
This is a discussion on how to help singers - it is not an attempt to gain customers for one type of singing class or the other.
Traditional singers adopted all sorts of tricks to overcome problems of singing in public- we've encountered descriptions of older singers who sang in to a corner in order to stay in tune, street singers who sang with one hand cupped over their ear to hear themselves over traffic noise, singers who sang with their cap over their faces to overcome nervousness of facing an audience - one singer we heard about stood on tip-toe in order to "reach the high notes".
This is not a competition to gain the most supporters for one particular method or another - it is an attempt to share ideas in order to help improve the standard of singing - it would be helpful if everybody treated it as such rather than attempting to undermine other's suggestions by misrepresenting and debunking them.
" my advice is to be yourself[ not be an imitation of anyone BERT lLOYD OR ONE OF THE CRITICS GROUP"
Jim Carroll