Ostensibly this might have been geared toward children, but it’s actually for the most part traditional English ballads and American folk songs that were pretty typical of Dyer-Bennet’s repertoire. Thus it’s a folk album that could be appropriate for either kids (not necessarily real young ones) or adults, sung and performed plainly by Dyer-Bennet on guitar. There are a few selections more suited for children’s singing than others, like “The Tailor and the Mouse,” a traditional English children’s song, “Little Pigs” (with the animal noises common to several children’s folk albums, such as those by Pete Seeger), and “The Hole in the Bottom of the Sea.” It’s dated in its stilted 1950s folk way, but is pleasant, and differentiated from some other similar recordings of the era by the gentle British Isles lilt in Dyer-Bennet’s vocals. Could famous British radio DJ John Peel, who changed his name from John Ravenscroft, have gotten the idea from the English fox-hunting song “John Peel,” performed here? The album was reissued on CD by Smithsonian Folkways in 2000. – Richie Unterberger
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