History Of Folk Guitar
Folk Music in North America
Folk music has many different strands, with origins going back to unaccompanied singing and other instruments. Dance styles based on the violin, bagpipe and other instruments. Many folk guitarists are essentially singers and songwriters, but they have assimilated a wide range of instrumental styles and techniques. Today, the guitar is a vehicle for many types of folk music
The overlap between folk and country music is highlighted by figures such as the Carter Family who, from 1927, recorded guitar-accompanied folk songs, creating a dual role for themselves as part of folk heritage and the country-music world.
One of the first preeminent folk singers who played guitar was Woody Guthrie (1912-67). Born in Oklahoma, he moved to Texas, where an uncle taught him how to play guitar. Guthrie’s guitar style comes from early country music and supported his songwriting, in which the melody is sometimes based on traditional songs, while the lyrics deal with the Depression and the plight of the poor and socially disadvantaged. Guthrie started recording in the 1940s, basing himself in New York and playing residencies at clubs, including the Village Vanguard. A Greenwich Village scene grew up around figures such as Leadbelly, who had moved to New York in 1935, and among Guthrie’s hits, “Tzena” had as its B-side “Goodnight Irene,” written by Leadbelly. One of Guthrie’s most powerful songs was “This Land Is Your Land,” in which the guitar part is made up of basic strummed chords with separate bass notes played in a plain homely style. Guthrie’s songs helped to mold the folk group The Weavers, formed in 1948, and following Guthrie, a number of guitar-playing folksingers emerged, including Burl Ives and the extraordinary Elizabeth Cotten.
Elizabeth Cotten
An important early guitarist with a sophisticated and versatile finger-picking style, Elizabeth Cotten (1895-1987) was born 
and raised in North Carolina. Influenced by local banjo styles, she only played guitar in church for many years, until encouraged to perform and record by Mike Seeger. He made recordings of her at home in Washington that were released, in 1958, as Folk Songs and Instrumentals with Guitar, a moving testament to America’s heritage of music making. The instrumental “Wilson Rag” features Cotton playing her own distinctively toned, syncopated country-ragtime style. Her composition “Freight Train” embodies the spirit of an earlier period, with a chugging bass, rolling arpeggios, and a clear J expressive melody. Other numbers include the brass band-inspired “Graduation March,” church hymns such as “Sweet Bye And Bye,” “When I Get Home,” and the fiddle tune “Run…Run,” played on lower strings against a background of open strings. On “Vastopol” Cotten uses an open tuning and plays the melody with bluesy bends and passages of arpeggiation supported by a steady bass. The unusual bluesy folk song “Spanish Flang Dang,” also on this album, is an old open-tuning parlor piece that harks back to a lost era.
Instrumental developments
John Fahey, born in Maryland in 1939, was the first folk guitarist to stand out as a solo instrumentalist. For his time he is startlingly original. His primary source appears to be the blues, but his crossover experimentalism has a feral intensity that cuts across prevalent trends. After his first album, Blind Joe Death Vol. l (1959), he recorded, edited and rerecorded his early material, resulting in, among other pieces, the ten-minute Transcendental Waterfall” (1964), notable for its use of atonal chords. One of Fahey’s greatest albums, Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death (1965), demonstrates his improved technique.
The slide-based “I am the Resurrection” and “The Death Of Clayton Peacock,” with its microtonal variations, draw in the listener, while mesmerizing landscapes of sound move along with a flow of imaginative ideas on tracks such as “Orinda Moraga” and “On The Sunny Side Of The Ocean.” Other musicians who emerged with a strong instrumental style include Dave Van Ronk and Sandy Bull, with his eclectic mixture of material on “Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo”(1963). Doc Watson, too, recorded a large repertoire of folk material. gadgets for men
Folk Music in the UK
Britain was a crossroads of cultural diversity with its own peculiar mix of American influences and indigenous music. One of the early folk groups, led by Ian Campbell, started out playing skiffle in the 1950s and eventually incorporated ceilidh dance music, with the guitar playing simple chords and rhythms.
Davy graham
Davy Graham (b. 1940) was the first strong instrumentalist. An adventurous pioneer, with a powerful finger style technique, he called on a blues-based foundation to explore jazz and non-European music. In the early 1960s, Graham wrote “Angi” (1962) which, with its classical-sounding theme, descending bass line and jazzy flavor, became one of the most popular folk instrumental pieces.
On his first album, The Guitar Player…Plus (1963), Graham’s music is a mixture of melodic blues guitar and compositional jazz approaches. Graham played an important role in the developing British folk movement, his discovery of DADGAD tuning, and arrangement of “She Moves Through the fair” being widely influential. His album Folk Roots, New Routes (1964), with singer Shirley Collins (b. 1935), was one signpost for British folk. During a personal voyage of discovery, his guitar became a conduit for all types of music. On the instrumental “Maajun (1964), for instance, he adapted Arabic music to his style of playing, becoming a figurehead for those who see folk as a catchall that draws on music worldwide. His open-minded eclecticism epitomizes the split with revivalists that can occur in the folk scene.
Martin carthy
A very different line of development came from the work of Martin Carthy (b. 1941), a major English folk revivalist who sang traditional songs with guitar. He drew on collections amassed by folk archivist Cecil Sharp and many others, and absorbed material from all over the country.
Carthy plays accompaniment to the song line, using earthy harmonies and tunings with low drone notes that run along under the music. Early in his career, he found his own way of working with traditional melodies, using a DADEAE open tuning.
On his first album, Martin Carthy (1965), his attractive, understated accompaniment lets the melody and words stand out on songs such as “The Wind That Shakes the Barley.” One of the most memorable guitar parts in folk, “Scarborough Fair” has captivating original guitar voicings that help to carry the vocal line and create a haunting timelessness. On “Sovay,” with Dave Swarbrick on violin, Carthy plays interesting bass movements and rhythms, which act as a counterpart to the vocal. With this and Second Alburn (1966), Carthy started to establish an authentic-sounding English folk-guitar style.
Bert jansch
An artistic individual with a highly personal style, Bert Jansch (b. 1943) has an intuitive musicality that led him to develop his own technique and approach to the guitar. On his exceptional debut album, Bert Jansch (1965), his guitar playing is characterized by a unique sound, depth, and feeling of mystery, and the guitar parts that he created through writing and singing his own material have a marked originality. With its rolling drone note and expressive arpeggios, “Oh How Your Love Is Strong” produces a gentle intimacy, and “I Have No Time” has a magical, haunting depth. Jansch’s guitar is expressive in its muted understatement on the powerfully moving “Needle of Death,” with its dark subdued tone.
Jansch’s remarkable guitar technique and physicality can be heard on the short instrumental “Finches,” which unfurls organically with cross rhythms and a feeling of movement and release. The instrumental “Veronica,” with its hypnotic rocking bass figure, includes falling, scattering upper parts. Whether using standard or open tunings, Jansch often achieves a harmonic and rhythmic idiosyncrasy that is indefinable; his touch and essence are also retained when playing his exquisite arrangement of Jimmy Giuffre’s impressionistic jazz composition “Smokey River.”
The album Jack Orion (1966) includes “Black Waterside,” one of Jansch’s most famous pieces, with its mesmeric descending figure and snapped percussive touches. Using a low drone note, its changing accents defy bar-line structure.
John Renbourn
A classical guitar student, John Renbourn (b. 1944) established a close rapport with Jansch, working with him on a number of recordings, including “Lucky Thirteen” (1966), a duet that established their own style of instrumental interplay. Renbourn’s playing moved in various directions, including a meditative early-music flavor which can be heard on “Lady Nothynge’s Toye Puff” (1966) from his second solo album Another Monday (1966). He had developed this area further by the time he recorded Sir John Alot of Merrie England’s Musick Thynge and Ye Grene Knight (1968). William Byrd’s “The Earl of Salisbury,” and his own composition “Lady Goes to Church” demonstrate Renbourn’s ability to play in an evocative early-music style on steel-string guitar with a remarkable variety of tone and a supple technical liquidity.
In 1967, Pentangle formed, with Renbourn and Bert Jansch, putting out their first album The Pentangle in 1968. Tracks such as “Bells and Waltz” demonstrate Renbourn and Jansch continuing their instrumental style, backed by the rhythm section.
Folk-rock
Developments in mainstream rock and pop arrived on the British folk scene in the mid to late 1960s, through the music of Fairport Convention. Formed in 1967 with guitarists Richard Thompson (b. 1949) and Simon Nicol (b. 1950), Fairport Convention started out playing American folk-influenced pop, blues, and rock ‘n’ roll. The group also explored traditional folk music and rearranged it, extending form, harmony, and rhythm. These elements gradually synthesized, and Fairport developed their own type of folk-rock. With Thompson playing lead and Nicol rhythm, both guitarists used mainly electric instruments, which was then unusual in the British folk scene. Their first albums feature guitar styles that have an American West Coast sound. Unhalfbricking (1969) reveals country influences and original touches on “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” and “Genesis Hall.” Importantly, some tracks such as the extended “A Sailor’s Life” show Fairport incorporating traditional British material.
Liege & Lief
For the album Liege and Lief (1969), Fairport Convention used arrangements that stamped their own identity on traditional material to create a British folk-rock sound. The guitar often has a rocky edge and plays around with rhythmic patterns in an original way. Guitar solos and fills are often based on expanding folk phrases and melodic themes; this can be heard on “Matty Groves,” which features an instrumental section with unison riffs and a driving rhythm, and on “Tam Lin,” characterized by a signature sustaining riff and distorted rhythm chords on emphasized accents.
“Medley,” with four traditional jigs and reels, sees guitar doubling the lines with Dave Swarbrick’s violin. A brooding atmosphere is created on “Renardine”: here, a wash of electric and acoustic guitars using space and reverb provides imaginative support for Sandy Denny’s vocals. “The Deserter” offers a contrast between relaxed acoustic and menacing electric backing, and “Crazy Man Michael” includes attractive chords and a short solo with effects.
