Way Out West, what a record, and at ten bob what a price.

Ewan McVicar writes in "One Singer, One Song" (1990) "I first met Alex in London in 1960. He had just returned from Paris where he had been a busking blind blues singer, complete with white stick. He had made a miraculous recovery in London and became a folk singer. Alex always mixed his songs and loved them all. He recorded albums of cowboy songs, Scots ballads, bluegrass and blues and blue material and a blooper or two. I got up a a folk club in north London where Alex was that evening's guest and sang "Maggie's Waddin". Alex was much taken with "Maggie". He asked me to come and sing it again at his next gig, after midnight that same night in the Partisan Coffee House in Soho, where one of the resident singers was a very youthful Long John Baldry. I saw Alex again years later in Glasgow. He was singing in one of our concert halls. The Ian Campbell Folk Group was on, so was another noted performer whose identity evades me. She had long lank hair, a long lank dress, sang long lank ballads, and her personality was rather short on joie d'eistence. Shall we call her Alanka? Anyway, Alex was filling the role of compere. At one point he complained about who was getting paid what. "Here's the Campbell Group, they all arrived in a Jaguar. Here's Alanka, she arrived in a Jaguar. And here's me, with the seat hanging out of my jeans". he turned round, and in the days before designer shredded denims, his native flesh was indeed in view. The last time I saw him was in the early 80s at the Glasgow International Folk Festival. Alex sat beside me, his vocal chords were so damaged he could not sing any more".