I put some thought to this piece I just wrote about this sort of CHANGE we are discussing. I hope it makes sense. It does to me. Music and tales are all subject to our creative juices working on them. --------------------------------------------------------
Picasso said, "Art is a lie, that allows us to see the truth!"
I'm sure he wasn't speaking about "me" when he said "Art."
BUT I was a champion liar according to the judges of contests for things like that. Tall tales got taller, sometimes, in my hands, than they ever were before I found 'em. They even found a punchline when I saw that was necessary to have modern ones of us more readily accept it---since people today have, some say 'sadly', preferred it that way. So changes happened. I got Chris through college tellin' 'em on steamboats. I sang and talked into the wind, and came home with the rent.-------------Alchemy, of a sort, me thinks!!
The only ones who care a whit about putting rules on this trad mouth-to-ear transmission scheme, a system that has always been, more or less, the way of the world, are those who are often those gettin' their due money out of it. They've contrived it in order to obtain their due. -- They made it in the first place -- and that's how it ought to be.
But they, graciously, have allowed us to hear their songs. If it is a good tune, we want to use it--maybe with our own tale making up the lyric--or as written--no matter.
Did Hank Snow write the song I called "THE HOBO'S LAST RIDE" when I encountered it like Gollum finding "his" ring? Utah always said it was a trad hobo recitation with no tune. But Hank, like Dylan and all of us, made it a new thing---put it on record, and accepted the cash for doing that---and, I suspect, said "THANK YOU" before he (Hank) found the Gray Havens.
Hank Snow did write "I'm Moving On" (I think) and many other songs---from which he got the cash to purchase all those silly automobiles that made him feel like a sort of a success.
Friends, let's us, simply, enjoy the various celestial choirs--and all the variations!