In 2000, at Maryland Banjo Academy (of sainted memory), one of the classes was called something like "Jazzing up solos with phrasing".

The activity of the class was to pick a tune everybody knew at some level, and in G tuning, two measures at a time, go around the room. The class picked Cripple Creek. Each person was to (and did) propose some different way to play (or maybe even just to suggest) the tune of just those two measures, using whatever devices could be devised. So slides, hammer-ons, pulloffs, rubato (although in the folk context we didn't use that word), repetition of notes, skipping of notes were used--any way imaginable to vary the playing of those two measures. Then we moved to the next two measures, and so through the song.

It became clear that Cripple Creek, far from being a mere simple tune for raw beginners, is a box of jewels!   

We then went to Angeline the Baker and did that one in double C tuning, with similar eye-opening results.

The teacher (and, more's the pity, I can't cudgel his name out of my aging braincells right now) said something like: "When we first start to play banjo, we're exposed to the 'simplest' of tunes, and struggle through them using our very limited understanding and almost nonexistent skills. Then we go on to something else, maybe a little more complicated, armed with a little higher-level understanding and skills, and we don't go back to what we look at as 'that baby tune' (in this case Cripple Creek). Cripple Creek, with a reasonable degree of skill and imagination, is a GOOD tune, and don't look down on it! It's worthy of the attention of the best players. And so is every other tune."

Dave Oesterreich