Richard Thomson and Joni Mitchell are both great singers - both of them have a way of producing a natural yet unique and individual sound, a voice you'd always recognise (a valued attribute in folk song), while giving plenty of attention to what they're actually doing with the voice and making sure it sounds as good as it can be. And of course they are both capable of writing great songs - they have the skill of taking the individual experience and giving it universality. If "they feel as if they're from the tradition", it's because they draw on some of the strongest aspects of traditional melodies and singing styles and use them in their own way. But they're still modern singers and don't pretend to be anything else.

Keith Marsden and Dave Webber are in a different category because they consciously try to create songs that sound as if they've been around for decades or centuries, and do it very well too.

As someone up there said, they all work hard at their material and don't offer us any rubbish - I don't recall any of them claiming ot have written a song while on the bus or fast asleep, or that the song just came to them with no effort on their part.

And I suppose the answer to why singers like this stand out is that an awful lot of singer-songwriters fail to do what either of the above pairs of examples do so well. Maybe it just has to happen as a sort of natural selection process, with the Thomsons/Mitchells/Marsdens/Webbers being the successful ones who survive and whose work will live on, whereas the rest just get quickly forgotten.

Marje