Regarding the issuing of recordings of Pardon, MUSTRAD has a story about this, though I am not sure I have the events correct and clear.

I'll start with a quotation from Mike Yates' MUSTRAD contribution, from the introduction to the "Put a Bit of Powder on it, Father" CD issue:


In 1999, Topic Records asked me to write the notes to their forthcoming Walter Pardon CD - A World Without Horses (TSCD514). I had not been involved in the production of the album, nor had I chosen the songs that were to be included. The original producers, Jim Carroll and Pat MacKenzie, had originally hoped that Topic would issue a double CD using many of their recordings of Walter. It seems that Topic felt that these later recordings failed to show Walter at his best and so Jim and Pat withdrew from the project, leaving Topic with a single CD that was without notes or documentation.

Ron Stradling continues the story:

"The recent history of this pair of CDs - the start of which can be seen above - is strangely convoluted. Almost two years ago, after parting with Topic, Jim and Pat asked me if I would be interested in releasing the 'second' CD - and I readily agreed. We exchanged a letter or two, but they then got involved in a protracted move to Ireland which seemed to take up most of the summer. I phoned them several times afterwards, but it seemed clear that they had lost motivation for the project.

Some months later, while talking on another subject with Mike Yates, the second CD got mentioned and he suggested that he could do one quite easily. Again, I readily agreed. The next thing I heard was that Topic had reinstated the second CD - consisting mainly of Mike Yates recordings!"

Keen readers of Mudcat threads, might, at the mention of one or two names in the above posts, wonder whether any heated controversial discussion ensued. And so did I. A search of the MUSTRAD site threw up a link to the following page, headed "Enthusiasms, No 3". Yates and or Stradling are, if I read this aright, said to have written 'a total distortion of the truth' with some readers unable to grasp why any of the background history should have been committed to print in the first place.


I don't really want to comment on that particular controversy. But I will suggest that through reading we get some sense of the context within which Pardon's singing was recorded and marketed for sale. And on that basis it is relevant to the stated topic of this thread (if not to the thread and how it has developed on a broader level as a conversation).

Enjoy!

I have been reading a book about Knapton. Maybe more to follow.