Brian, you are right about music and broadsides, this point was also made on the MUDCAT site.

Another snippet of interest for me is that Pardon was engaging with folk music on the radio at this time, if I have read his reference to Bob Copper accurately. Because one thing I am interested in is trying to build up a picture of what you might call 'influences' or at least the soundscape Pardon had lived in/through, as he might not have been 'influenced' by what he heard on the radio. Another snippet I picked up from wider reading was that he attended the Methodists as a child: that would have been a source of musical and singing experience if my own Methodist childhood is anything to go by.