My impression is that Sharp was a [ me myself]mé féin.
a variation on the vicar of bray, a man who believed in the end justified the means.
granted his results and end aim was a lot better than Stalin or Mao,

however in my opinion he missed opportunities to collect partly because he was financially constrained and partly because of his agenda
if he is compared to Alfred Williams, Williams collections are important from a socially historc angle because he collected everything he heard.
Sharp would have probably dismissed the Singing Postman[ a master songwriter of the comic genre]although Smethurst was chronicling Norfolk in the 1960s