Whatever people here decide who is and who is not a traditional singer, the real traditional singers like Walter Pardon, Tom Lenihan and others had no doubt whatever of the meaning of the term and could happily talk about it for hours.
If, as Steve Gardham claims, "words mean different things to different people" we may as well all throw our dictionaries on the back of the fire and cease all attempts to communicate.
Dictionaries - mine anyway - carry definitions of both 'traditional' and 'singer' so it doesn't take rocket science to work out what constitutes a 'traditional' singer - unless it suits an individual not to do so.
Jim Carroll