Rick, there's something interesting going on here. Some folks seem to think in chords, and others think in melody. In other words, some find the chords and just fit the melody into them, and others find the melody and fit the chords around it. What works for one type of person may not work very well with the other.

Maybe this is a left vs. right brain thing, or maybe it just depends on what a person learned first. I play fiddle, which is primarily a melody instrument. I learned a bit of clawhammer banjo before playing fiddle, and I tended to ignore the chords and just play the melody and strum a couple of appropriate notes (yeah, they were chords or parts of them, but I didn't think "D7," I just thought "those sound right). I never learned very many chords, mostly because of laziness on my part, but it shows what my brain was focusing on.