I wondered whether this should be the start of a new post but with so much that has been written on this one about Bert Lloyd, in particular in relation to his part in 're-writing' traditional songs that I thought that this was the place for it.....

On the Musical Traditions website there has just appeared a transcription of an interview with Bert Lloyd that dates back to February 2nd, 1974 when it was conducted by Barry Taylor. In the newly written introduction, he describes himself as being in the "Singers' Workshop, the 'beginner's group' that was closely allied to the Critics Group" though "I had been involved with folk music for around fifteen years and closely connected with the Singers' Club since the late 'sixties." He gives the reason for the interview as "We thought that it would be a good idea to have a magazine that would run parallel with the Club, featuring articles on the regular singers, as well as the guests, plus any other topics that we thought germane. After some thought, we decided that our choice for the main article in the first edition would be an interview with Bert Lloyd. You can read the interview (and people taking part in this thread really ought to) by clicking here
The interview itself, I find fascinating though not much of it came as news to me having read Bert's books and articles as well as Dave Arthur's biography and had several quite long conversations with the man when he stayed at our house after appearing at our folk club in Lewes.

For me the two biggest surprises came in Barry Taylor's introduction where he writes:-
" by 1974, Lloyd had become a rather peripheral figure for us but I believe that we still admired his work."
Really? Bert Lloyd peripheral to the Singers' Club? Surely he was one the the main reasons for the existence of that club with its distinctive approach?

and

"A hot topic at the time was 'folk-rock' or 'electric-folk' and I was really surprised with Lloyd's approval of this treatment of traditional music but I did not realise just how involved Lloyd had been with Fairport Convention."
Again, this comes as a surprise. If Barry had been involved with the folk scene for 15 years surely he would have known of Bert's strong involvement with the folk scene. I am fairly sure that we got full houses at the folk club for Bert's appearances at the folk club was because he of his reputation as the leading guru of the folk scene - the Penguin book, his own widely read Folk Song In England, the many Topic sleeve notes, the fact that every time you heard the likes of Carthy & Swarbrick, the Watersons, Dave & Toni Arthur and quite a few others, they would be singing his praises as an inspiration, an influence and a source of material. Why should it be any different that Sandy Denny and her Fairport mates should look anywhere else?
One memory comes back to me in writing this. Once when Bert stayed with us he was talking about a band that he had heard who he described as "a sort of Hungarian Fairports" and that he wanted to be able to get an English tour but he did not know how to go about it. I suggested that he contact Joe Boyd and he slapped his head and said, "Of course, Joe... why didn't I think of that?" I never heard if such a tour ever happened, I would love to think that the Hungarian band's Sandy Denny was Márta Sebestyén but she would only have been 17 in 1974. It would still be some years before I fell under Márta's magical musical spell but I still have her as one of my all-time favourite singers.

In his introduction Barry Taylor as links to another transcribed interview on the Musical Traditions website; one conducted by Mark Gregory on 20 September 1970. That's been on MT since 2009 but I am off to read it again.