"Describing Collins as Bucolic is a put down,"
I think you're right but I don't believe it was aimed at Shirley specifically, rather to the imitators who pranced around the stage with floral dresses singing the the dreaded head-voice
I don't know what she is doing now other than she seems to be prominent in a EFDSS which seems to have lost the folk-plot

"But he backed a blues singer who apparently told all to the McCarthyist witch hunts"
If you mean Josh White, I think this is true to an extent, but a little misrepresentation of the real situation
I had the opportunity of discussing this with Goldseing when Bob Thomson took me to meet him in London and I have to admit his arguments made sense.
Goldstein was a ballad pioneer - his Riverside and other labels gave us access to some of the finest British and American traditional music
I did resnt his buying up some very rare books from British bookshops for his Singing Tree Press

I was delighted to here of an incident in a bookshop in Carlisle when he found himself in an Aladdin's cave of books son song, music, lore and tales.
He piled up a few doxen of them, plonked them on the counter and asked the propriorter if he gave discount for Trade
The proprietor replied, "We don't sell to trade", swept them off the counter and placed them back on the shelves

"The problem with Bert and Ewan was that they were charlatans and posers."
Now we are getting down to serious grave-dancing - about time we got to what is actually being said
Sorry - this gets more distasteful by the minute
If only you people had provided a workable alternative - all I can see is a pile of researchers and singers corpses amid the ruins of a failed revival - and "folk songs that ain't got nowt to do with the ones I know
How utterly depressing
Jim