I've been listening to Jimmy for a long time and I really like his take on classics. The finger style approach is different and often refreshing. Being honest here, I hear one track of a new rendition of the old song - that retains the key moments, the flavour and the delicate bits, but is otherwise a new product. I don't like a copy of the original. It doesn't matter how good you are, if you take Mark K, or Brian M, or Gary M's guitar part and play them in the same style, they're never the same. I extend this to when you take a studio album and the same player re-creates the famous solo, it's never the same - always an imitation. Usually a very good solo, but not the same. They have to change it, or augment it a bit, and this then means it's compared to the original. Maybe the new one is technically better, or cleverer, or more complex, but it's not the same.
I think this is why Jimmy's versions are so good - because they are not copies. No matter how I try not to, I hear a pitch bend and think 'that wasn't quite so bendy as Knopfler's' or start wondering if he's playing different inversions of the chord. For me, it means I cannot enjoy it as a separate entity, but only as a copy. I suppose its that old question. If you play the same guitar, with the same strings, with the same effects and with the same blend, and the same notes, will it sound like the original player, and we all know it never does. I like Jimmy's solo stuff, but I hear people copying Knopfler's solos, and for me that doesn't work. ~ There is a video on YouTube of Sultans of Swing that is so close it's hard to tell it's not knopfler, but what's the point? It's like my old tribute band, no matter how good we were and how much we tried, we were just a copy!
