I can't recall hearing a Buddy Holly song and I'm damned sure I've never heard anything by Johnny Mathis.

A friend of mine regularly does Buddy Holly, when he's not doing Hank Williams or his own songs in the style of Hank (which are excellent - it took me several hearings to realise they were his own).

At Sale Folk Club, just before Christmas, I heard "When a child is born" (complete with spoken section) sung from a music stand because "I'm too busy to learn songs". Good night, though.

And yes, Snail, what any performer - down to rank amateurs like me - talks about on Mudcat is far less important than what we actually perform and where we do it. I still think these threads can be informative.

If entirely past tense it is re-enactment

False dichotomy. An evening of songs by Buddy Holly is "re-enactment" in just the same way. If you can hear new interpretations, new variations and new songs in the same place where you hear trad. songs sung the way Cecil wrote them down, then a "mostly traditional" night is no more "past tense" than a "mostly MacColl, McTell and McCartney" night.

the 1954 Definition is clear - rather it is a grubby paternalistic fantasy that effectively denies the individual creativity of the perceived lower orders of a still feudal society.

Ah, shut up 'n play yer kemence.