I knew and talked to one or two folk club musicians in the '60s - guitar players who were then in their 50s. Their use of the guitar in the pre-war period (for example) was mainly to play in jazz outfits and as accompaniment to popular songs. Folk as we know it - or as the then Folk Song and Dance Societies knew it - had very little to do with the guitar. This viewpoint was passed on to me by variety performer and dance Sam Sherry, who was a regular, with his old Gibson guitar, at the Lancaster Folk Stir in the mid '60s.

It's easy to forget now, but guitars were a lot less ubiquitous in the early/mid-50s and before than they are today. It was really people like Donegan and the skifflers, and the early US blues visitors to this country (Broonzy, Josh White, Brownie McGhee) - people from the Ken Colyer and Chris Barber era - who popularised the instrument in this country. And that's probably when it worked its way into the folk scene.