In the spirit of drift, it is fascinating to listen to the first "Fairport Convention" album (1968). It's basically soft rock, a la the Hollies with a bit of Beatles thrown in. A couple of Joni Mitchell songs (I Don't Know where I Stand and Chelsea Morning), a Dylan cover (Jack of Diamonds), a 60's rocker called "Time will show the wiser", and several similar songs written by those died-in-the-wool folkies Simon Nicol, Tyger Hutchings, and Richard Thompson. FC also had Ian Macdonald Judy Dyble, and Martin Lamble at the time. Nice enough stuff, but not really much more interesting (other than the good lyrics in the Mitchell songs) than the Spice Girls or 1910 Fruitgum Company or the Monkees. (well, in fairness, FC had better musicians, but the music really wasn't great)

The "traditional" folk stuff from Fairport only came later. There's another 1968 album called "What we did on our holidays" (including Fotheringay & She moves throught the fair), with Sandy Denny, which begins to sound more like what we think of as the Fairport of "Liege and Lief".

The basic point is that it's difficult to separate different styles of music by the musicians.