An automatic nomination should go to any song that's been cited as "traditional" within the writer's lifetime. One that comes to mind immediately is Si Kahn's Aragon Mill. His Wild Rose of the Mountain has an oh-so-trad feel, too. I've seen a doofus on You Tube list "One, I Love" as being a "traditional Irish song popularized by American Jean Richie" rather than crediting it to her as writer/composer.

Woody Guthrie wrote a fair few that have become traditional, particularly within the "went-to-camp-learned-it-there" group like me. Plane Wreck At Los Gatos/Deportee, Pastures of Plenty, Do Re Me, Pretty Boy Floyd, Roll on Columbia, and of course, This Land is Your Land

Pete Seeger's own songs presented in the same style as traditional material were absorbed as such by plenty of folks. Get Up & Go, Where Have all the Flowers Gone (with last verse by Joe Hickerson), If I Had a Hammer (with Lee Hayes), Turn! Turn! Turn!- just the tip of the iceberg.

Stan Rogers wrote for the ages, for a certainty: Mary Ellen Carter, Barrett's Privateers, Northwest Passage.

Even moreso, Gordon Bok's songs are timeless: Turning toward the Morning, Hearth and Fire... and on and on So many writers who are strong in their traditional roots - as most of those I mention- can write things that can stand for years: Tommy Makem's Four Green Fields - I get into the Irish and Scottish writers and I could be coming up with a list long as my arm!

Some songs I think SHOULD become traditional, for the sheer number of covers also make me wonder if they might miss becoming that because of OVERexposure (Not that bloody song again!): Eric Bogle's Green Fields of France, The Band Played Waltzing Matilda. Kate Wolf's Give Yourself to Love, Bob Franke's Alleluia, the Great Storm is Over, Sidney Carter's Lord of the Dance, Sally Rogers' Lovely Agnes.

It'd be interesting to know what's being sung around campfires these days and by younger folks in general. I wonder what impact in the US the songs in "Rise up Singing" will have on what endures into the tradition & if it hastens the transition of something from "pop/popular"music to "folk/traditional" - which is likely a whole OTHER thread...

I'm glad it wasn't specified how many nominations we each get! This had me thinking all morning.

Joanne in Cleveland