"Respect for the old singers has EVERYTHING to do with their craft as singers"
Having called traditional singers untrustworthy, you appear to now be trying to scramble out of the hole you have dug for yourself.
I have also had a great deal of pleasure from the older singers as I have had from revival singers singing the songs well.
Most of the older singers were past their prime and they knew it and often said so.
They all brought a depth of experience to the songs that the younger singers could only hope for, but it wasn't their skill as singers that made them important - they were all of equal importance, skillful or not, for their understanding of the songs they sang.
One of the finest singers we ever recorded, Traveller Mary Delaney, was a chronic asthmatic, breathing out of a bottle last time we saw her.
Even without her former skills, she was still capable of moving a listener, and herself, to tears - that was the secret of her artistry.
That is not "patronising" - that is a fact we have recorded over and over again from singers who never regarded themselves as such, or said - "you should have heard me twenty years ago".
I've always believed that anybody, almost without exception, can become a passable to good singer with a little work - being an interpretative artist, which is what these singers were, takes time and experience.
"What I say is these people are only human and we all like a bit of recognition. "
Egotists as well as liars then?
You really are the pits Blandie
Jim Carroll