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How can he be blind in both eyes and only one? Perhaps some editing, I do not know enough on the subject to do this though and would not want to spoil the entry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.110.232.121 (talk) 14:56, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is certainly too much speculation, heresay and opinion in the present article, which contravenes WP:OR, WP:NPOV, and WP:V to state the obvious. It needs far more than the single source used so far. His WP:NMG is tenuous at least, without some of these issues being addressed.
I've acquired one of the sources and already had a couple more. They tend to merge into each other as they're based on extensive interviews with Dick Burnett himself. He really was an important artist, so it's well worth improving the article.DavidCrosbie (talk) 01:45, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've identified the other source. The local museum in that link quotes from a reputably published book.DavidCrosbie (talk) 02:14, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've now removed several paragraphs which appear to be from that source. Some of the information may be true and verifiable — and, indeed, relevant. I reproduce them here in case somebody finds a justification for including anything from them.
This unique banjo-fiddle-playing team, at times joined by banjoist W.L. Gregory and his fiddle-playing brother Jim, also of Monticello, continued to record for Columbia (and Gennett as well), through 1930.
Many of the songs Burnett and Rutherford used in their performances were songs they had learned from others in the past. When Burnett was asked where he learned some the old songs he recorded, he indicated some of them came from "Negroes around playing old time music" in Wayne County. He mentioned "Bled Coffey here in town, he was a fiddler during the Civil War, and the Bertram boys here, Cooge Bertram was a good fiddler…..Yes sir, there were a lot of black men playing old-time music. Bled Coffey was the best fiddler in the country."[citation needed]
Burnett was a prolific songwriter as well as an instrumentalist. Possibly his most well known song is the popular "Man Of Constant Sorrow" that found notoriety in the movie, "O Brother, Where Art Thou." On one occasion when asked if he wrote the song, Burnett replied: "No, I think I got that ballet from somebody—I dunno. It may be my song….."[citation needed]
It has been correctly observed about Burnett: "He was a valuable link to country music's folk past and was a repository of material which he had both preserved and rewritten: "Pearl Bryan," "Short Life of Trouble," "Weeping Willow Tree," "Little Stream of Whisky," and many other ballads known to all folk revivalists." The team certainly deserves the title of "one of the most colorful and rewarding groups of the 1920s."[citation needed]
