O-o-o-o-oh, boy!!

I think that trying to pin down "true purist" is going to be as slippery as trying to pin down "folk music." Everybody has an opinion and nobody agrees on much of nuthin'. It's like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.

Nevertheless, my leaning is toward B.

If one "faithfully reproduces a much-loved style or performer exactly as the original first did it," one is actually doing little more than imitating. Essentially, this turns you into a sort of "Rich Little" of music. You are trying to sound like someone else. You may be using a great deal of technical facility in reproducing the original, but you are completely missing the creativity that went into it, hence, you will never actually achieve true "authenticity." You have the letter of the song, but not the spirit. Here's just one of many problems:   many source singers don't do the same song the same way twice. So . . . where does that leave you? No, if I want to hear Ralph Stanley or Leadbelly sing, rather than listening to someone try to sing like them, I'd just as soon listen to a recording of them.

There is also the problem of knowing what "the original" is. To take an extreme case (but it does illustrate the point in an somewhat exaggerated way), do you do Tom Dooley the way you first heard it on a Kingston Trio recording? Or do you get it from Frank Warner's recording? Or do you try to duplicate Frank Proffitt's recording? Did the song actually start with him? Or to carry it even further:   how do you sing a song like The Three Ravens (the 1611 Ravenscroft version)? What model do you use? How did the original sound? See what I mean?

I feel that my loyalty should be to the song, not necessarily to the person whose recording I learned it from. And when learning a song from a song-book, other than musical indications (moderato, andante, etc.) and whatever collectors' notes there might be (often merely matters of opinion), there is no singer to imitate or emulate. So—it is incumbent upon me to use whatever knowledge, musical skill, and yes, creativity to bring out what I perceive to be the essence of the song.

Years ago a fellow by the name of Rolf Cahn put it this way:   "On the one hand, there is the danger of becoming a musical stamp collector; on the other, the equal danger of leaving behind the language, texture, and rhythm that made the music worthy of our devotion in the first place. So we try to determine those elements which make a particular piece of music meaningful to us, and to build the performance through these elements."

So, as I understand the question, I go with B. But "purist" is a pretty fuzzy term. Especially "true purist." What would a "false purist" be?

Don Firth