I need to be a little bit of a curmudgeon... stir the pot...

Elsie:

Ewan McColl WROTE many songs, wrote a spellbinding erotic song for a woman who was not (reportedly) the one to whom he was married at the time ... are THESE folk songs?? Is Roberta Flack a folk singer? Joe and Eddie also recordeed it, as did many others.... THEY called themselves Gospel and Jazz singers, played in mainly folk clubs, to mainly folk audiences (whatever they are/were), and THIS place is also for "blues," whatever that is...and "Blues" are generally from this century...hmm... How do we catagorize Josh White Jr.??? I have done OLD Tom Paxton numbers at street fesitvals and very young kids sing along, know all the words, and tell me they learn them at camp (something Tom has told me he's very proud of - I would be too, were I him.) Is his older material NOW folk? Was it ever? (I think it was/is)

There's nothing wrong with a sweet voice or good musicianship.

Sometimes the Kingstons did very old stuff, very well... as did the Limelighters, etc... Sometimes these type performers just sing better than hard core "true" folkies. I have known some of the latter who are painful to listen to - even for a short time, ie, "you get a pail and I'll get a line".....ad nauseam. Kind of like Malvina Renolds' voice (- a GOOD writer!) or Shel Silverstein's. Some folks sound like they're in pain. I was in a GREAT metropolitan center for a while, and the major folk society there had an astronomical snob titre..predominantly middle-aged, fairly comfortable, pointedly wearing the accouterments and paraphenalia of the sixties, white liberals, and catty as hell!!! Many of them had voices far less sweet than Shel's, and constantly strove for one-upmanship by tricks like: singing in foriegn tongues; preferably ones no one else knew; THEY often had HUGE lists of songs to ditch, and could quickly let you know if you started to sing one of them at a jam session, while you were expected to listen sweetly to THEIR caterwailin' in a foriegn tongue, like as not pounding on an old Martin, unique for it's thick rind of grimy filth, it's gross disrepair, it's lack of being in any recognizable state of tune, and it's strikingly corroded strings. (Actually, some of their guitars were pretty nice -EXPENSIVE, man!!, but some were really about that bad; it was clearly a sign of being IN!!)

I wonder if anyone recognizes the locale... or the type?

Only a few hrs drive away, along the Central Susquehana Valley, their Pennsylvania neighbors were enormously more generous of spirit, and infinitely more fun!

Sorry - Properly a subject for another string? Arrogance among folkies, like racism among anthropoligists....? (They both generally like to claim they're not).

I know; if you want certain things, having no reliable categories makes dealing with any mass of materials impossible... no easy answers, but the sub-categorization actually already happens a lot, I'm not sure it always helps - everybody's system is a little different. Presumably I've insulted enough folks by now...something I normally try to avoid...sorry, got on a role! cheers!