pfr: OK let's take "generally accepted" highest standards, and pick up on MtheGMs example of the Copper family. Back a long time ago- say a hundred and thirty years- people used to go to a pub in Rottingdean for their Saturday night entertainment, a good old singsong. They didn't have the option of the radio, the telly or unless they went into Brighton even the music hall. So they enjoyed themselves as best they could with the excellent music they had, sung the way they did (as best they could too I presume).

Roll on 50 years and the singarounds have mostly stopped. Nearly everyone has a radio and a gramophone, and there's a bus into Brighton to watch the films or go to concerts, and the homebrewed stuff is.. amateur... compared to the polished products available. But one family holds out- they like the old singarounds, so they keep doing it. And good old Bob Copper becomes a bit of a star when the BBC, looking for evidence of Olde England, put him on the radio.

Had they acceded to the "generally accepted" best singing style, they would have sung their songs in an RP accent in a light tenor, with a tasteful piano accompaniment, as was used for so much of the recorded "folk" music of the time. That was what the market expected.

It's all a matter of what you mean by "standards".