"To say, as I have done.........."
You have ben saying exactly the opposite
You have denied the existence of the oral tradition.

In which case, old man - you have misunderstood everything I've said here - and everywhere else. I've not so much denied the existence of the Oral Tradition and Folk Process as questioned the entrenched mythology about such collective processes which effectively overlook the creative genius of the individual. It is in the subjective idiosyncratic genius of the individual that any tradition is best manifest . The conceptualising of The Tradition as primarily a collective phenomenon has created a somewhat false impression about the nature of Traditional Song and the men and women who created it giving rise to the sort of hogwash we see in the 1954 Definition which takes the individual singers and musicians out of the equation and replaces them with a romanticised faceless collective. Consequently all talk of a Folk Process invariably regards the collective working-class as a passive medium for a series of otherwise random mutations the laws of which have yet to be determined but the evidence is there for all to see! Bullshit. What I'm saying is that these people were far from passive - that it was they who made these songs, they who sang them, they who passed them on, they who learned them, they who modified them, changed them, re-made them and that it was they who are the masters of a very exacting craft just as they were masters of their trades in other respects.

In the high arts individuals are cherished and celebrated; in the Folk Arts individuals are but members of the lumpen crowd.

You have put the oral tradition down to the imaginings of sloppy and agenda driven researchers.

And quite rightly so given what we know of the methods, assumptions ad objectives of Baring-Gould, Cecil Sharp, Bert Lloyd et al. Their legacy lives on in the mentality which believes that Revival Folk & Folk Rock somehow improves upon the singing of a Cox or a Larner or a Heaney and a Stewart or a McPhee or a Scott. Or those who prefer the soulless wailing of a Davy Spillane to the pure drop of a Seamus Ennis or a Felix Doran. At any rate, The Oral Tradition is a secondary theoretical construct arising from the Primary Sourced Reality of Traditional Folk Song, which is, as I say (and as you say) about the generations of individual men and women who made these songs, not the workings of some community.

Rather than being the compositions and re-compositions of of "ordinary working class men and women" you have put traditional song down to the work of "master composers

Again I say (for the hundredth time): THE MASTER COMPOSERS WERE THE ORDINARY WORKING CLASS MEN AND WOMEN WHO MADE THE SONGS. In their ordinariness they were (and are) exceptional as is evidenced by the craft and beauty of the songs themselves which are the cherished treasures of our culture.

You have said that folk song is no different than the pop-pap that is the stock in trade of music industry, the output of classical composers..., etc

What I actually said is that the only thing that makes folk song different is one of style. I regard the 1954 Definition and the Folk Process as red herrings set up to distract us from the very obvious fact that Working Class Men and Women were capable of creating these songs and that musical creativity on a par with ANYTHING was part and parcel of working-class culture. The Folk Process effectively removes the creativity of the working-class individuals from the equation by regarding them as passive anonymous carriers, as though Folk Song were some sort of disease. If The Folk Process exists at all (and it is a very big IF), then it exists ONLY as the CONSEQUENCE of individual creativity. This is why I say the 1954 Definition doesn't tell us anything because for it to work as an orthodoxy (which it has become) it demands absolute compliance to a very wrong-footed bourgeois fantasy of what constitutes a working-class COMMUNITY. Thing is, if you step back far enough and there is no individual creativity; thus do I say all music is traditional. If we didn't know the names of Mozart and Beethoven we'd see them purely in terms of Tradition and Community Cultural Context.

(I'm sure everybody knows by heart your 'folk context' list)

Only because you keep repeating it ad infinitum, old man. It's real enough though as you found out for yourself in your recent jaunt to Glasgow.

In the past you have written of the older performers as.... can't remember the exact words (past their sell-by date will do for now); am happy to dig them out if you care to deny this.

I've never said anything like this - & it runs contrary to everything I've ever held sacred about the nature of music, Folk Music especially.

You have - on this thread, ignored all efforts to get you to state your position on the role of traditional singers in the making and disseminating of traditional song

Baring in mind what I've said here, please go back and read my posts.   

and you have refused to acknowledge their uniqueness, compared to, say Frank Sinatra.

Their uniqueness is not to be found in comparing them to Frank Sinatra. The difference is stylistically and culturally determined. Both Sinatra and Cox were masters of their respective cultural crafts and traditions. They were both human individual geniuses who did what they did and have left a legacy accordingly. They were both unique.

Your 'last stand' caused you to retreat behind Armsrtong (or Broonzy's) 'talking horse', along with Frank Zappa and Sun Ra.

The Horse Definition has more to offer us than the 1954 Definition - it was said by a musician for a start and isn't a product of the bourgeois class-condescension that typifies The Revival. All music is folk music; just as all music is stylistically diverse. It doesn't say all music is the same. Traditional Folk Song - the Old Songs - is but part of the stylistic diversity of a world of music in which (on my record shelves at least) Davie Stewart and Willie Scott have an equal footing with Zappa and Sun Ra.

You now appear to have undergone a 'Road To Damascus' conversion - welcome to the folk club.

My Road to Damascus occurred when I read a library copy of Bob Pegg's Folk back in 1976 when I was fifteen. I recently found a copy on ebay and I'm reading it again. Thirty-three years on it still makes eloquent and perfect sense to me and has pride of place on my bookshelves alongside Pegg's Rites and Riots which gave a similar Road to Damascus regarding the nature of folk customs and folklore. The only Folk Music I've ever listened to is the real stuff, the ethnomusicology if you like, eschewing the prissy MOR affectations of The Revival as being (with but few exceptions) a grave misrepresentation of the glories to be found in The Tradition.

My favourite singer right now is Mrs Pearl Brewer of Pocahantas, Arkensas - look her up on the Max Hunter Folk Song Collection (she's listed under M for Mrs!) - listen to her singing The Cruel Mother (Down by the Greenwood Side) especially; two versions are up there, recorded 6 months apart, both are different, but essentially the same song on which she has a conceptual handling that chills the very blood. It is real music. The pure drop, as I say.