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 to play. 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 fingerpicking 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 Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar, a moving testament to America's heritage of musicmaking. 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