I think Chris has had a bit too much lemonade in his shandy. I think he meant to say that Harry Boardman NEVER received the national recognition he deserved and I would endorse that view.
Harry passed away in 1987, Roy Palmer a few months ago. Their lasting heritage are the songs and books that they sang and wrote introducing long forgotten industrial ballads to a wider audience and in Manchester Ballads, published in 1983, they give us a fascinating insight into how Manchester developed from a small town to the Cottonopolis it became in the late Victorian period culminating in the construction of the Manchester Canal.
In 2005, Chris Harvey and myself were looking at the Manchester Ballads folder and made the decision to carry on the work we were doing with Harry's songs and embarked on recording all 35 of the ballads in the book. In doing so we found that songs really came to life and we also found original tunes to a few of them - most noteably "The Calico Printer's Clerk" which had found a renaissance in the 60s and 70s when Dave Moran found the words on a broadside but no tune so he made a tune up. The song was actually written by Harry Clifton in 1863 with a very music hall tune put to it by Charles Coote jr.
It's interesting to note that various subjects recur throughout the ballads - the Manchester Ship canal was mooted early on, The Infirmary in Picadilly had a large clock lit with gas which became a tourist attraction and a few ballads mention this in passing, major historical events such as Peterloo and the cotton famine of the 1860s have ballads. There was optimism looking forward with the advent of steam engines and how these would transform how we did things in "Manchester's Improving Daily" and "Ryly's Rambles". On paper these ballads are literally very flat but singing them brings them into life.
The fact that ten years or so after Chris Harvey and I brought our CD out, we are now getting a different style of music being applied to these ballads is great and I look forward to listening to the interpretation of the songs by Edward the Second.