I have been using my CD review column to lobby for more trad. I treat singer/songwriters the way Hamen treated his bookkeeper, but I have never dissed an artist who showed respect for musical tradition, even as he/they spruced it up for general entertainment. The trad interpreters have been legion and benificial. Without the Weavers, there would have been no folk revival in the fifties, just as the Kingston Trio was responsible for the 60's Hootenany craze.
I would have been unaware of Joe Heany if I hadn't heard The Clancy Brothers and The Dubliners.
Time is the great leveler. Today, The Weavers are revered but, the fact remains that very few field recordings were arranged and accompanied by Gordon Jenkins. We can accept their slick, for the era, charts because their love and reverence for the songs and the cultures were obvious. I have become more accepting over the years. I have no trouble with the pop version of Wimoweh but I, still, question the folkiness of Ralph Marterie's "Skokian" and Guy Mitchel's "One Of The Roving Kind".

                      Mike