After a weekend away, I managed to watch Songs of the People on BBC i-Player last night and can only agree with the opening post that it was "Wonderful".
Not only was it well constructed with useful, informative and well researched and edited contributions from singers, collectors and academics who managed to structure a profile that helped the viewer's understanding of this very interesting man, the programme used excellent cinematography of the superb landscape of the area where Henry was working and collecting, including aerial footage. Clearly this was an expensive programme to make - and deservedly so. One of the best on the traditional music of the British Isles that I have seen. I think that I will have to record it to DVD from the i-Player because this is a programme that I will want to keep.
It was interesting to read the question about whether the Henry or the Greig/Duncan collection is the larger. Looking at the mighty 8-thick volumes of the Greig/Duncan on my bookshelves, it would be difficult to imagine any larger collection, but in the end it does not matter because we can just be thankful that these two magnificent collections have been published.
Both Gavin Greig (in the Buchan Observer) and Sam Henry (in the Northern Constitution) used local newspapers and publicise their collections - and by printing some stimulated other singers to get in touch with other songs. It turned out to be a very good move for both of them.
Another similarity is that both collections appeared on American university publishing houses. Perhaps it was because the these university presses - Georgia for Henry, and Folklore Associates through the University of Pennsylvania for Greig were remaindered quite quickly so that I was able to buy my Folk Song of the North-East directly from Kenneth Goldstein in 1970 for less that a quarter of the published price at the TMSA festival in 1970. With the Songs of the People, I saw it for sale in a bookshop in Galway around 1990. There were many copies at what I thought was a ridiculous price. In fact when I returned to that shop on a later visit to Galway a couple of years later, there were still copies on sale; I bought one as a present for a friend!
At the end of the programme, we were shown shelves of Henry's papers with the comment that a great deal of Sam's work war yet to be catalogued. It would be great to think that there is hope that Henry's collection could receive the same attention that Gavin Greig's did in the 8 volumes edited by Pat Shulham-Shaw, Emily Lyle and others.