I love this stuff: folklore in the making. Everybody has the answer! Somehow I think there may be the solutions to the world's problems contained in this thread.

Folk rock was not invented, no one at the ACME Company rushed off for a patent. Like every musical style in this world it sprouted from something else. I've studied Thomas Hardy's writings for many years with a view to learning about music that was played before the age of recording dawned. Check out "The Fiddler of the Reels" about a pre-electric bands who could thump out a tune so compelling that men and women danced until they fainted.

The late Lonnie Donnegan certainly had a bounce to his stuff; I remember drunken nights in folk clubs in the north of England in the 60s that predated the popular folk-rock era but would certainly have qualified. The name itself differed too -- folk rock seems to be what it was called in the US and electric folk was what we called it in England. It really hit the big time with Lindisfarne in the early 70s when they got several tub-thumpers (and some very pretty stuff like Lady Eleanor) into the charts.

Tons of people claim it as their own. Don't believe them ... or me. ;o)