GUEST 09 Jul 03 - 11:49 AM 's second question was, how did the Coppers and Watersons gain recognition as the primary harmony groups; here's a shot at answering that one.

The Copper Family do sing harmonies on traditional songs, and apparently have done for some time. The question of how they began is hard to answer, but church singing, glee singing and other popular styles must have influenced them. There are other family groups who do this as well, albeit not many of them. The Coppers became the best known not only because they are the best singers, but because they have a compelling story that ties them to the tradition and the revival, and also because they skillfully and intentionally bridged the tradition-revival gap.

Th compelling story is that when the Folk Song Society was founded, one of the collectors who attended had just been to visit Bob's Granddad, I believe it was, to collect songs. So two of that generation of Coppers were made honorary members of the FSS at its inception. (someone here must know this story better than I do offhand. Any correction on the details would be appreciated). They had thus been "source singers" for the first revival. The family song-book they maintain and their family history also show that they have had an unbroken tradition of singing going back some 200 years, a very unusual thing to have documented. Bob Copper, in addition to being such a masterful singer, was a BBC collector, a writer, and to some extent a "culture-broker," bringing the tradition to the festival scene. For all these reasons, they are far batter known than any other group of their kind.

The Watersons, of course, are revivalists rather than traditional singers, and caught the wave of the second revival, as the film mentioned above will show you. They thus had access to festival stages, Bert Lloyd's help, Topic Records, etc, from the earliest days of their career.