No, Jim. It would only make them traditional singers if, in addition to their operatic performances, they sang traditional songs, learned orally, in a traditional style. Like any other traditional singer.

The fallacy lies in assuming that the label "traditional singer" is comprehensive. It isn't. Around here it's shorthand for "a singer (of at least one traditionally learned song that he or she performs in a traditional manner) *whose material or style interests us.*" Any traditional singer (however defined) is allowed to sing nontraditional songs as well. Those songs don't count, they just don't interest us, or they interest us for very different reasons.

One could confine the label to someone who sang nothing but traditional songs in a traditional manner, but that's pointless because such a person would be an *interesting* traditional singer anyway.

At this point I'll restate my conviction that the label is convenient but secondary to the specifics of the singer,the song, and the context.

McCormack and the others are out of the running if the only traditional songs they sing have been learned from print and are performed in a nontraditional style. If the only traditional song they sing in a traditional style is "Happy Birthday," then, to that extent *only,* they're traditional singers. Just very, very uninteresting ones, not the interesting kind that one would discuss. They're at the opposite end of the spectrum from the hypothetical *most* interesting traditional singer.