Jim, to illustrate a point:

On "Prairie Home Companion," Garrison Keillor's radio show (Minnesota Public Radio, but broadcast over most NPR affiliates every week), he has a running gag. It's based on the late-night infomercials hawking some group's CDs and it consists of Keillor making like the hard-sell announcer and a couple of people playing Bluegrass style—hyper-fast three-finger picking on a 5-string banjo and at least two people singing through their noses. They sing a whole disparate list of song-snippets, from Broadway show tunes, to songs from Disney movies, to operatic arias, to lullabies, all at the same fast, hard-driving tempo and "high-lonesome" singing style. The routine is pretty funny. What makes it funny is the total inappropriateness of the song/style combination and the fact that every song sounds almost exactly like every other song.

It probably makes a lot of Bluegrass musicians writhe. But it more than illustrates the point that a huge number of different kinds of songs can be done "Bluegrass style."

Doesn't make them Bluegrass songs, though.

Don Firth