"It really has little utility for folk music."

I would be the first to agree with you on that point, Frank--except that my own life experience seems to be leading me in a different direction:-)

As luck would have it, lately a friend has been inviting me to drop in on what seems to be a sort of bluegrass jam with mostly guitars and mandolins--they solo around the circle for every tune, and, owing to a certain uniformity from one tune to the next, I run out of ideas pretty quickly.

Strange as it may seem, I've been listening to listening to Coltrane lately, not to "borrow" so much as to see how he thinks about things, with the general object being to finding ways to express thoughts of my own.