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Hey Mac,

I remember when the Beatles first came out. The folkies all agreed that they were just pop fluff. Shallow. It was obvious. Later in college, I had a music professor who insisted that any pop music at all was inferior to classical music. To him, even Tchaikovsky was kind of "pop." Nowadays, I work with some serious bluegrassers, fellows who are considered some of the elite of bluegrass music. Some of them think any music other than bluegrass is simply laughably stupid.

After spending a lifetime studying, teaching, and performing music, some of my favorite artists are "rootsy," often people who sing a little out of tune and whose timing might not be perfect. Traditional blues artists, appalachian country and bluegrass, folks like Mississippi John Hurt and Dr. Ralph Stanley. Tom Waits, Ry Cooder, Leonard Cohen, Iris DeMent, and many others are considered inferior by people of whom can be said to have finer taste and a discriminating ear.

I remember once being riveted at a jam session by a singer's rendition of "Down by the Riverside." He sang it with a rough, whiskey voice and some quirky stylistic turns. I was transfixed, moved. A fairly well known singer at the jam told the guy he sounded like someone was strangling Bugs Bunny.

So here's to all the shallow arists. The pop fluff, faux music hall, psychedelic, aleatoric, pretensious garbage of the Beatles; the commercial, sell-out, sometimes pseudo intellectual, poorly copied R&B of Creedence; The quacking and croaking of Ralph Stanley; The nasal, crying in your beer country of Hank Williams; The gravelly throated sound they call singing of Louis Armstrong; and, to all the others...the Bee Gees, Barry Manilow, George Jones, and Taylor Swift....folks like Igor Stravinsky, Klaus Nomi, Ray Charles, Vincent Van Gogh, Tiny Tim and Susan Boyle.

Man, what kept them going? What kept them slogging through with all the naysayers and critics so quick to pronounce them inferior? What made them believe in themselves with all of the experts calling them shallow, untalented, garbage? Find out what that was...that's what we need.