Fashion seems to raise its ugly head in folk music as much as other walks of life. There are certainly songs that were all-pervasive only a year or two ago, which never seem to get sung in my hearing nowadays. However, there is a steady stream of long unsung songs that blossom forth after being "discovered" on old unplayed recordings. The only songs that truly disappear are the new dross that doesn't make it on to a widely distributed recording. They deserve to be lost. This is no different from the old-time dross that didn't make it into the broadsheets or the orally passed on tradition. Little is more certain than that someone in the future will regard todays less known recorded songs as a great future revelation. That is what traditions are made of.

Richard