"Some songs are best unaccompanied, some unaccompanied"
It should ALWAYS be up to the singer of the song to decide, not an accompanist finding him/herself with some spare time on their hands.
Apart from anything else, it takes practice for a singer and accompanist to make a song work.
There are as many 'unaccomplished' accompanists out there as there are 'unaccomplished' unaccompanied singers,
"Harmonising is wrong?"
It can be bad manners. The only time I ever saw Walter Pardon perform less than proficiently was at a London Club where some members of the audience totally threw him by harmonising loudly and dragging the chorus down to half speed. He actually dropped two songs from his public repertoire because of this.
Mandotim,
It should also be up to the singer to decide how long the song they are going to sing is - I've heard as many singers make a hames of a short song as I have a long-song singer - if you know what I mean!
Do you a deal, I won't talk about 'short attention-span brain-deads' if you stop referring to "long-song megalomaniacs".
Jim Carroll