Hi Jim,

I am familiar with Texas Gladden (cousin of Hobart Smith) and I knew Nimrod at Highlander Folk School in New Market Tennessee.

You are narrowing the parameters of the singing voice to accommodate misconceptions
about narrative folk singing. African narrative singing uses head voice. Blues shouters have sometimes used it. Even our own Jean Ritchie produces tones that could be said to be reminiscent of head tones. Head tones are used in Asian music as well. Jean Redpath has a mastery of expressive singing that doesn't detract from a narrative quality.

Why limit the expressiveness of the human voice to an academic view of which it is capable?

Surely, there is room for all kinds of expression of a narrative quality using many different
ways of singing.

The notion of "head tones" in general is not particularly precisely defined any way.

What you describe as technique over content is simply bad singing.

Frank