HI y'all.

I wended my way through this thread and conclude that most of the people mentioned are not trditional folksingers but singers of folksongs (as Sam Hinton refers to himself). Most are professional entertainers under the rubric or image of the "folksinger" which has become ambiguous in the public eye.

Jean Ritchie, Almeda Riddle, Jeannie Robertson, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, Leadbelly, Mance Lipscomb, The Carter Family, and a few others mentioned above fall into the category of folksingers who came about through their cultural upbringing and bring the musical styles and songs a firsthand authenticity.

The others mentioned are all talented, some more knowledgeable than others, and some more entertainting than others but they come to the music secondhand like me. You can bend the definition any way you want to but to me if you don't have that cultural connection in that respective community that spawns the songs you sing you are like me "a singer of folk songs" and not a traditional folksinger.

This is not to say that the "singers of folk songs" are not wonderful or great in what they do. I love many of them and admire their work.

Also, I repeat, there is bad traditional folk music out there as there is good coming from modern interpreters. "Bad" might include poor performances where people can't sing too good, keep a pitch or musicality, butcher lines they don't understand or other things. One thing Lomax stressed in his recordings is that the traditional performance was the best he could get from the "informants" he recorded

Frank Hamilton