I'm in agreement with a lot of what pfr says about Pardon: my thinking is that some people may object to the idea that he may have been influenced by 78s because they are ideologically committed to a particular view of Pardon and get agitated when faced with ideas that conflict with or cast doubt on it.

'It's simple'. People can take a simple view or a more nuanced one. For me, people are entitled to take whichever view they like. With respect, I don't buy the idea that 'academic arguments' are self-serving, or see why if this sort of point is valid it doesn't also apply to simple arguments.

It also seems to me fairly plain that when Pardon was discovered, this marketing and lionisation did not go from first liking his songs and singing and then following on. I was looking at something today that said the writer took a long time to get to like his work. But that person had been involved in all the surrounding 'stuff'. Can't just think who it was now


Supporting the same view of the history of the discovery and 'marketing' of Pardon within the left wing world of the folk revival, is something else I read recently, by a person who said that the early recordings of Pardon weren't very good because it had been decades since he had sung.

As I see it, whatever genuine friendships may have sprung up, Pardon was taken up because he ticked boxes on the McColl etc ticklist of what counted as traditional/folk. This seems to me to be as close as a 'factual' account, if simple, of what happened.

This is my view, that's all.