"I found and still find his recorded singing voice comical -"
As someone who's father was born in Glasgow and as a 'Liverpool Sass' who has been steeped in Scottish song from the likes of Jeannie and The Stewarts since I first entered the scene in the early sixties - I do not
As a ballad buff, I am grateful for the 175 Child ballads MacColl breathed new life into and introduced onto the scene - I agree with Bronson's comments in his review of his and Bert's 'Riverside Series' when he described it as a groundbreaking step in opening up the world of sung balladry to the general public
You may find his accent "ridiculous" many thousands of us did not and are still not doing so - Scots and Sassanachs
I find it staggering to find that almost all his recorded repertoire is still freely available three decades after his death - surely that's an indication of how "Hoots Mon" people found his singing
I find it totally unfathomable (well, I don't really - just another "stick to beat an artist who wouldn't join the luvvie/folkie set) why MacColl's accent is such an issue with the few, yet they seem happy to accept the wierd phrasing, poor pronunciation, the hiccoughy delivery, the abandonment of narrative forms, the non-use of punctuation, the ostentatious accompaniment...... that turned so many of our most beautiful songs and ballads into narrative garbage - from so many of our folk superstars - MacColl and those who were influenced him never did that - they became song/storytellers (which is how so many of the field singers described themselves - English, Irish and the few Scots we recorded)
In this respect, MacColl's approach to the tradition was far nearer than most revival singers I have met and listened to (or stopped listening to)
I have no intention of nausing Will's thread up with this argument, so I will say as much as feel be said in one go and move on
I don't give a toss who likes or dislikes MacColl's singing, any more than I expect anybody to give a toss about my tastes
What does concern me is the unbelievable necrophobia that still prevents an intelligent discussion on the mass of other work MacColl did during nearly ten years of weekly meetings done with other singers on the scene who attempted to come to terms with folk song in order to give it the chance of survival (all done while MacColl's knockers were getting on with their own careers)
Garbage about name-change, distorted WW2 yarns like Teribus's, "Hoots Mon accents" and all the other crap has created a no-go area to discussing what, in my opinion, a major body of work on singing traditional songs
It may be of no value but people will never know until they open the box.
It's not as if the scene can flop down in it's armchair content that the future of folk song is in safe hands now, is it?

Apologies Will (can't guarantee it won't happen again elsewhere)
Jim Carroll