"Someone out there may enjoy reading this:"
Great article based on an interview I instigated when I was editor of The Singer's Club Magazine, The Lark, (I irritated Ewan no-end by referring to it as "Thrush")

I really can't understand how people can challenge Bert's massive contribution to folk song
He approached it from the perfect position - as a singer, and he put some of or best folksongs into the repertoire
I've discovered recently that several of the songs he sang came from English singers who emigrated to the North Eastern States of America and to Canada
He was vague about their origins sometimes - it didn't seem to bother too many people before folk research went ivory-towerist and became a status symbol rather than something to be enjoyed and understood by all
I remember Pat being told she was wrong about something we had discovered about Irish Travellers by the co-author of one of the major books on English Folk Song, she was firmly put in her place by being told, "I've done a course on it".

Bert's international stuff is stunning - 'Songs of the People', 'Folk Song Virtuoso', 'The Lament', 'Voice of the Gods', 'The Savage in the Concert Hall'.... and all the other wonderful stuff the BBC sneaked out for the intelligentsia on The Third Programme
If anybody would like to avail themselves of this gold-mine, send me your e-mail address - I've just put it up on my PCloud for distribution (this offer includes anybody I may have fallen out with - it's far too important to allow personal differences to stop it being distributed)

Personally, I found Bert far more difficult to communicate with than I did Ewan and Peggy - he was a far more private person, but his work still stands out as a monument to 'The best of times' of the English revival
Jim