I think that we have a moral, even if not legal, responsibility to acknowledge the author of a song when we perform it in public. I can't believe that mars the enjoyment of singing. We might like to add the sources from which we learned or absorbed the arrangement. The fact that the author is dead doesn't change anything, and it doesn't mean the song is "traditional" even if it has slipped into the common stream of music. With this amazing resource at our disposal, Mudcat, we have no excuse for not knowing the origins of a song. It's up to us - the singers - to set the standard. The fact that some popular singers claim songs they haven't written or fail to acknowledge dead authors by calling a song "traditional" doesn't mean we have to do it. If a song is, as far as we can find out, traditional then we can say so. As for the standards of recording companies, well surely we don't want to stoop that low. Joy