Okay, I guess this depends on a definition of 'folk'. Are we talking traditional music (e.g. Barbara Allen) or music of the common working folk, or popular acoustic music?
Anyway, here are my candidates:
1) Woody Guthrie - 'nuff said
2) The Seeger Family: Pete Seeger - solo or with the Almanac Singers (Lee Hays, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee) or The Weavers (Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman); stepmother Ruth Crawford Seeger who compiled existing folk songs; step siblings Mike and Peggy Seeger, folk musicians in their own right.
3) Huddie (Lead Belly) Ledbetter - "King of the 12-String Guitar" and writer of songs such as "Good Night Irene", "Rock Island Line", "Midnight Special" (how many people have recorded that one?) and prison songs. Worked as a duo with Blind Lemon Johnson. Influential in both folk and rhythm & blues.
4) Joan Baez - began as an interpreter of traditional ballads ("East Virginia" is one of my favorites) while adding contemporary folk and pop/folk, especially Dylan.
5) our own Gord who did for Canada what the others above did for the US, starting with tradtional music, solo or with Terry Whelan as the Two Tones, recording a select few others, and of course writing his own.
Now this list doesn't BEGIN to cover other contributors like Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, the Lomaxes who preserved early artists' work, Burl Ives, Paul Robeson, Ian & Sylvia, Theodore Bikel, Joni Mitchell, Chad Mitchell and Kingston Trios, Odetta, Peter Paul & Mary, Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, Buffy Sainte Marie, Eric Andersen, Tom Paxton, Hamilton Camp, etc., etc., etc. And this doesn't include (U.S.)Civil War and temperance protest songs, union songs, Dust Bowl and other Great Depression songs and so on.
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