In the splendid 'Singing From The Floor' Tom Paxton says he wqs playing professionally for nine years before he did a whole show of his own songs. If it's good enough for Tom...

It seems to me perfectly valid to sing the songs you love. The original writers would generally seem to agree otherwise they wouldn't try and flog us the sheet music. And the whole notion of the writer/performer is relatively new - before the Beatles started writing their own stuff their was quite a division between the writers in Tin Pan Alley or the Brill Building or wherever, and the performers. It still made for a lot of great records.

I agree about carbon copies of recorded performances though - can't see the point unless it's a Bootleg Beatles sort of thing. I've enjoyed a few of those over the years but it's a different kind of experience, in some ways more akin to theatre, and really an exercise in nostalgia (for those who were there the first time round) or the the next best thing (for those who weren't). I do a lot of Jake Thackray songs because I love singing them and I think they should be heard (I share the view expressed earlier that a song is only truly alive if people are singing it). I don't do a Jake impersonation because 1) I don't have the talent or facility to do it, and 2) In any case it would just seem such a futile exercise - the very effort of impersonation would get in the way of engaging with the song itself and, for both audience and performer, the song, surely, is ultimately the thing.

As for covers that are better than the originals - give me Joe Cocker's version of 'With A Little Help From My Friends' over Ringo's any day of the week. A Beatle-fanatic friend of mine has also made a strong claim for John Tams's version of 'Girl'.