A correction:

> Chesterfield records...released a ten-inch album by Brand called "Backroom Ballads" (CMS-101) in 1949.

Internet sources generally assert that the year was 1949, but the actual date may have been a few years later. According to David Bonner's "Revolutionizing Children's Records" (2007), the small Chesterfield label released the album "in the 1950s."

Since Brand's first "Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads" for Audio Fidelity (a ten-inch version) was released in 1955, the Chesterfield album may well have appeared at any time between 1949 and early 1955. The Audio Fidelity album (AF 906) is datable by a brief review in "High Fidelity" (Oct., 1955).

I'm unaware of its precise contents; presumably it contained most of what would soon appear on the twelve-inch version, "Vol. I," about 1956. Perhaps it was merely a reissue of the Chesterfield disk, whose contents are given up-thread.

Whether the Chesterfield album's "Fireship" preceded the Weavers' is thus uncertain.

The first of the twelve-inch series to be copyrighted appears to have been "Bawdy Songs ...," Vol. IV. That was in Nov., 1957, acc. to the Library of Congress.

Complicated, isn't it?