Charlotte ~ I'm impressed that The Regents weren't "long-forgotten" by you.

I forgot their name ~ and I had bought the dang record!

Ron, I may have been alive when the Weavers were active, and in fact have very distant, foggy memories of hearing their "Goodnight Irene" on the radio while sitting in a highchair, but I missed being aware of their "Sloop John B.'

Your point is well taken, if I understand it correctly: the well-known songs with which many of us have become familiar as "traditional" classics are actually an essentially random set of songs, each well-known within an isolated local culture, and each of which happened to be "collected" by someone whose efforts turned out to be remembered and widely disseminated. All pretty accidental.

I suppose that the many songs that were never collected and which are now completely forgotten were definitely "folk songs." The songs that we know well enough to argue about were all "popularized" (and arguably "corrupted") to some extent.

Like you, I find all this stuff fascinating. I have a few hard-and-fast opinions, but am willing to go either way on many issues (and will sometimes do so in writing, just to keep stirring the pot.)