From the moment I got immersed in bluegrass and country music, some 40 years ago, I gravitated toward the hard-driving, straight-ahead bluesy styles of singers like Hank Williams and Jimmy Martin. (One of the first bands I was in did something like 6 out of the 12 cuts on a Jimmy Martin album.) I hated embellishment or prettification. I remember I didn't like Charlie Waller's voice because he had vibrato. I've mellowed a lot since then, and I now love the operatic qualities of a Webb Pierce or the early Ray Price, even though my voice is now only good for the "corny" sound. But I still want to hear a singer with pipes who puts some soul into a song. The gentlemanly white-bread sound (I won't name any names, but the practitioners are called "folk singers") does nothing for me.