Delighted that this is at last surfacing
Bob Thomson told me about this not long before he went to America - I informed the Librarian at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library - can't remember if Malcolm Taylor had started with them then
They ordered it - since then, it has been like waiting for the other shoe to drop.
A interesting story (I think so anyway) about one of Carpenter's singers, Ben Bright, recorded on the (Swansea?) docks in south Wales.
Charles Parker was crossing Tower Bridge in London one afternoon, some time in the seventies when he saw an escapologist freeing himself from a straightjacket
Charlie got into conversation with the escapologists assistant, who turned out to be Ben Bright, a retired Merchant Seaman.
After a while Charlie realised that Ben would be worth recording, so he passed the name on to Ewan and Peggy, who made contact and began to visit him in his digs in Wood Green, North London.
Not only did he have songs, but he told of how, in the thirties, he jumped ship in California and became a union organiser for the Wobblies (International Workers of the World - Joe Hill's organisation) - he worked alongside some legendary Union organisers, including T-Bone Slim and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Part of Ben's story can be found in a small monograph Ewan and Peggy had privately published and distributed around the clubs they sang at.
Based on the information they recorded, Ewan wrote one of his best songs (in my opinion), Shellback, which featured in Philip Donnellan's documentary film 'Before the Mast'
Well into his seventies, Ben disappeared from his lodgings and got a passage as a deckhand on a ship heading for Australia.
The last Ewan and Peggy heard of him was a postcard they received congratulating them on the birth of their daughter, Kitty.
He had found a job (as a deckhand again) on a coaster sailing around Australia.
He can be heard on the Carpenter recordings singing 'The Handy Barque Companero'
A truly legendary man.
Jim Carroll