"you are also misinformed" John McCormack was not a folk singer who regularly had hit records as of 1905, nor have you shown that I'm misinformed about anything else above.

"stop derailing from subject mtter which is skip james" The subject matter raised at the top of the thread was Stephen Calt's credibility: his ability to research well and say good things about people when appropriate, as Al put it in the first post. Calt's book about Skip James popularized the myth that pop musicians helped invent blues music. Elijah Wald, who has also popularized that myth (if you haven't heard of Elijah he wrote a very well-received book about Robert Johnson), happened to drop by this thread, and not give any evidence for that myth, because for over a decade now he can't, because it's a myth. The fact that Elijah can't do that helps support the point that Calt wasn't credible, the subject matter raised at the top of this thread.