Hey,Midchuck Pete, THANKS for the compliment! (The band just spent the afternoon rehearsing) Re-reading this thread, there are things I wish I had said better.

Firstly, I agree with you, Midchuck, that trying to do it "the original way" is a very good way of getting it to a STARTING point, and that this is where your own creativity should take over. To put it a little differently, in cases where you admire the band (the Carters, Charlie Poole, Skillet Lickers, Woodchuck's Revenge, the Blue Sky Boys, and others) I think you owe it to them to learn it their way and then think a little bit WHY they did it that way, then go on to make the changes you feel like doing.

Next, everybody is right who points out that most bands never did a song (tune) the same way twice, and so it's an unfair straitjacket to limit yourself to the way they did it on the one recording. But often that's all we have. Back when the New Lost City Ramblers Songbook came out (1965?) I stared at that picture of Poole's Ramblers for hours (in tuxedos, no less) trying to get inside their frame of reference. I can come pretty close to Poole's banjo style, but wish I were as successful in getting the spirit of his songs.
   Then again, when Charlie Poole was my age, he had been dead for twenty years.