as the narrator; and The Wind in the Willows (1960), adapted and produced by Toby Robertson, with Richard Goolden as Mole, Frank Duncan as Rat, Tony Church as Badger, and Norman Shelley as Toad, with Patrick Wymark as the narrator. Another significant recording from this era is the premiere recording of Benjamin Britten's one-act opera/miracle play for children, Noye's Fludde (1961). A series of recordings of steam locomotives (then in the early stages of being phased out in the UK) was masterminded by the film sound recordist and mixer Peter Handford, selling up to 30–40,000 copies per year under the name Transacord. It also did some other unusual pressings such as London's Last Trams using early amateur mobile sound recorders. The repertoire diversified into modern British jazz through the poetry and jazz movement of the early 1960s. This meant that recordings by pianist Michael Garrick were particularly well represented. The radio ballads of Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, originally produced by BBC Radio (1958–64), were leased and issued by Argo from 1965. MacColl and Seeger also issued a 12-volume series of LPs called The Long Harvest, which featured variant British and U.S. versions of traditional ballads from the collection of Francis James Child. A small cluster of folk artists joined the label around this time, including Tom Paley (with his New Deal String Band), the Druids, the Clutha, the Songwainers, and the Garret Singers. In the 1970s, Decca extended their children's audiobook series the Railway Stories on the Argo label, with six further books (3 LPs) narrated by William Rushton. In 1974, they produced an abridged, dramatic version of The Hobbit, read by Nicol Williamson, and released the soundtrack to the film Tarka the Otter (1979), which featured Peter Ustinov's narration and David Fanshawe's music score. The label passed to PolyGram when the conglomerate acquired British Decca in 1980. Harley Usill left the company and co-founded ASV Records. Argo as an independent entity ceased in 1988. Argo relaunches The label was relaunched in 1990 as an imprint of Decca with the intent to concentrate on choral, organ, and British and American classical music. Releases continued throughout the 1990s. The most recent release was in 1998. After more than 20 years of dormancy, Decca announced that it revived Argo in July 2020 after partnering with HarperCollins's imprint William Collins to release certain spoken word recordings, recently unearthed from the label's archives,