"Perhaps you can sing Lennon/McCartney and Ray Davies songs within that tradition."
After you pay copyright costs you can, that's why they'll never belong to 'the folk'
You're slithering rapidly down the 'singing horses' slope, which is what robbed us of our right to choose what we listen to in folk clubs in the first place - sorry; I prefer to know what's in the tin before I open it.
"I'm not at all sure that all singers of folk songs really had a concept of the difference between "real folk songs"
Some did, some didn't, but they all knew that 'Searching For Young Lambs', 'Please Please Me' and 'Nessun Dorma' came out of different stables - something that seems to have gone over the heads of many folkies.
Don't think I know the story of Paggy Lee(sigh) and Miss Piggy Guest.
That woman messed about with my adolescence something rotten (not Miss Piggy, I hasten to add.
Jim Carroll