Brian: I was fascinated by the account of guitarists in Sakhalin playing 'Hotel California' (how our world has shrunk!) but you are talking about guitarists - a small percentage of any population - rather than unaccompanied singers. The whole point about the singing tradition, or whatever we choose to call it, is that it was open to anyone, not just people with the money to afford an instrument and the time to practise it...

I understand what you're getting at, but only partly agree. At that pub there were only 4 instruments in the room. But as I pointed out, at least a dozen people joined in with the singing, many of them not involved with those of us playing. They were just singing along, and did so to any song they recognised when we started to play it. Even the (20 year old) barmaid knew it and joined in.

I was at a BMF barbecue a few weeks back and similary (the only instrument there) just noodled the intro to "Wish You Were Here..." following which a whole group of the (mainly late 20s to early 30s) attendees started singing it.

This happens a lot among the people I socialise with...and a relatively small part of my socialising is with "musos". Mostly I socialise with climbers, mountaineers and with runners/ British Military Fitness (BMF) groups.

I agree that there's very little spontaneous acapella singing outside singarounds these days, but I suspect that this is largely because instruments have become so much more affordable. Looking back to my teenage years, when I was earning £5.00 a week in a pop factory, the cheapest guitar that was remotely playable was about £25, or 5 weeks wages. My daughter got a perfectly playable low-end Yamaha for just over half her first full week's wages working in a cafe. As I've said several times, almost every one of my kids' friends have instruments. Most of them are not musical or from particularly musical families, and the majority only know half a dozen chords, and play rarely, but the instruments are there.

Thinking of the houses in our street, except for next door on the right (the one attached to ours...poor sod has to listen through the wall but can't get any retaliation in!) every house for at least 5 either side, and all the ones across the street that I can see from our door, contains at least one guitar. And none of these neighbours go to sessions, singarounds or open mics. They just have guitars.

So I suspect the lack of unaccompanied singing isn't down to the fact that people aren't passing on songs, but to the fact that the zeitgeist we're in at present associates singing with accompaniment, instruments being affordable for a much larger proportion of the population than previously.

The original question in this thread, as posted by Larry, was: So.......can a song that was written and defined as a pop song or 'rock 'n roll' ever become considered traditional. And, if so, what would it take? And finally.....any examples of songs that have met this (or are meeting this) criteria?

And I'll stand by my initial point that a fair number of pop or rock songs that are 40-60 years old have now passed down through 1 or even 2 generations and some are on their way to becoming "traditional" in the sense that they'll be sung and remembered down the generations without people necessarily knowing their provenence. Of course, they won't become "traditional" in the sense that the original composers will be unknown (barring a catastropic collapse of civilisation as we know it!) but the way the original post was phrased didn't specify how "trad" should be defined.