Hi, Steve. "Some of us have been trying to sort songs into bins for a long time...If we don't it makes our study arenas far too wieldy."

True, but don't we wind up studying the songs we like, based on their subjective appeal? "Trad" or "non-trad" is secondary.

I think of all the really tuneless, inept trad songs that have been collected. Nobody would be likely to study them (as opposed to indexing them, which is obviously valuable) just because they are or appear to be "traditional" according to one or another extraneous definition. A song is, as they say, what it is, and as Popeye might say, "that's all what it is." Or virtually all, if one also seeks inter-song connections.

If, for example, I were to study "The Reuben James," I imagine I'd describe the historical incident in satisfying but not excessive detail, do the same for Guthrie's life and his service in the Merchant Marine, mention "Wildwood Flower" and the Carter family, look at songs on similar events, examine the song's diction and patriotic theme, how it compares to pop songs of the period, its history on vinyl, and anything else I find interesting.

The point is, that's exactly what I'd do regardless or whether "RJ" (or "SW") is deemed "trad" or "non-trad" by me or anyone else. (It's pretty much what I did for the "Johnny" songs.) The labels, while not exactly meaningless, fade nearly into irrelevance.