Play what you like - how you like. If you do something different with the music and thereby create something new and different, what does it matter? The listening public will be the arbiter, whatever you do.

I can happily sit down and listen to Lead Belly singing "Grasshoppers In My Pillow" - and then enjoy Davy Graham's take on it in his "Leaving Blues" with percussion and double bass added. Totally different - equally great. The existence of DG's version doesn't negate LBs or make it disappear.