Further:

The clip of Karlie May randomly playing "blues chords" on a classic (nylon-string) guitar is not much different from long-time jazz guitarist Charlie Bird (CLICKY), who used a classic guitar to good effect for jazz.

Sure, blues can be played on a classical guitar. No reason why not. But that's not the kind of guitar the early blues men played.

Don't try to revise history just to make yourself feel good.

By the way, there were gut-string banjos, but as I said above, the first banjos in the U. S. and A. were undoubtedly homemade, in an attempt to duplicate a West African instrument, the mbanza. They were fretless. And nobody knows for sure what kind of strings they had. It's hard to imagine a Negro slave, or an ex-slave, having access to a source of gut strings, and they certainly didn't have the means to convert sheep-gut to any kind of usable string. So they undoubtedly used whatever was handy. Possibly some sort of animal sinew, or more probably, wire of some kind. Various kinds of wire have been made for various purposes since ancient Egypt, Second Dynasty.

The 4-string plectrum banjo and tenor banjo (steel-strings) were used in early jazz bands and dance orchestras. And there was a move (on the part of some white musicians) to promote the banjo to a classical instrument—fretless, gut-strings—but it came to naught, largely because, unlike the guitar, nobody had written any "serious" music for the instrument.

Years ago I knew an old fellow named Percy White, who was determined to elevate the 5-string banjo to classical instrument status. He looked down his nose at folk banjoists, referred to frailing or clawhammer styles as "nigger-picking," and was generally considered by most people to be simply eccentric if not downright loony.

You ain't never heard The William Tell Overture until you've heard somebody play it on a fretless, gut-strung 5-string banjo!

It took me several days to recover!!

Don Firth

P. S. Congratulations, Henry, on your acquisition of a La Patrie classical guitar. I've never actually seen one, but I've heard very good things about them. Since, at present, I need a small-bodied guitar for when I play in my wheelchair, I seriously considered a La Patrie Motif, a parlor guitar-size classic. Lower bout still a bit too wide, so I'll continue using my nylon-string "Go-guitar" travel guitar, which does the job nicely.