Barbara,

It was Carter and Ralph (both of the Stanleys) that I heard doing this version of Man of Constant Sorrow from and old radio broadcast dwn in Florida I believe. Carter died in 1966 so it's quite a while that it's been sung that way.

Re the general subject of lyrics changing, we used to call it the folk process. If the change works and people like it and sing it, it will live on. If it doesn't work it will die a natural death.

To me that's what makes folk music/fiddle tunes/banjo tunes/ songs etc so interesting. If all songs were written down once and always sung the same way I'd only need a fraction of the shelf space that I now need for my 78's, vinyl, tapes and CD's.