re. Jim Carroll's post yesterday at 7.48am about the use of over-ornamentation -- I'm with him that this more often than not will distract from my enjoyment of a song.

If the song IS the the important thing, then IMO the decoration has to support the lyric without being intrusive. But if decoration consists solely of twiddles and appears on the same melody note in every verse (regardless of what the text is saying) or -- even worse -- appears several times in each verse, then I don't want to hear it, no matter how supple the singer's voice.

I love listening to singers like Jeannie Robertson and Lizzie Higgins who had a far more instinctive understanding of what was appropriate, and whose range of possible ornaments was wide and varied : some effects were big and significant and used for dramatic effect (the leap up from a very short note to the main melody); some were so subtle as to be almost not there (the use of tiny little pauses or stoppages of the melody to point to what followed); the careful rationing of a slurred ascent or descent within the tune; the twiddles etc.
And the fact that this was instinctive was evidenced by the fact that different recordings of the same song could have different ornamentation, which I don't think happens so much with younger singers who seem to take the decoration on board as part of the song-learning process .

I'm showing my age, but I'd almost like to enforce a rule that a song should be learned in basic format until the story or message is clear to both singer and potential audience, and as it becomes familiar to the singer, tasteful ornamentation would gradually "adhere" to it.

Rant over!