i think that the best classes in folk music for guitar were taught by my friend Bess Lomax Hawes who really started the guitar/banjo/fiddle class in groups in Boston in the Forties.


The key was this for me:   Simple, straightforward folk songs, accessible, easy to play and sing and meaningful. Bess mainly taught three chord songs with Burl Ive's "um-plunk"
and had up to 100 students in a class who kept taking her class over and over even when they got better playing their guitars.

Folkies often miss the forest for the trees when they get too virtuoso (sometimes boring)
and forget the roots. Bess knew as much (if not more) than her brother Alan about folkmusic.

Frank