what donovan plays is like thumb melody on banjo roscoe holcomb style.or like maybelle carte guitar style , donovan style works in standard tuning using c or shapes. steve baughman style initially usesopen g but it works using thumb melody banjo stle using the top string as a drone in dgdgcd a tuning martin simpson uses.
can we use less confusing terminology frailing is not clawhammer banjo and not thumb melody banjo, frailing is its own style involving bump dity, nic jones used something like that sometimes but in effect damped the drone string