Artists like Abner Jay

Karen J. Dalton was an American country blues singer, guitarist, and banjo player. She was associated with the early 1960s Greenwich Village folk music scene, particularly with Fred Neil, the Holy Modal Rounders, and Bob Dylan. Although she did not enjoy much commercial success during her lifetime, her music has gained significant recognition since her death. Artists like Nick Cave, Devendra Banhart, and Joanna Newsom have noted her as an influence.

Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter. AllMusic stated: "Coupling an oddball guitar tuning set against eerie, falsetto vocals, James' early recordings could make the hair stand up on the back of your neck."

Huddie William Ledbetter, better known by the stage name Lead Belly, was an American folk and blues singer notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced, including his renditions of "In the Pines", "Pick a Bale of Cotton", "Goodnight, Irene", "Black Betty", "Midnight Special", "Cotton Fields", and "Boll Weevil".

Fred Neil was an American folk singer-songwriter active in the 1960s and early 1970s. He is mainly known through other people's recordings of his material, particularly "Everybody's Talkin'", which became a hit for Harry Nilsson after it was used in the film Midnight Cowboy in 1969. Though highly regarded by contemporary folk singers, he was reluctant to tour and spent much of the last 30 years of his life assisting with the preservation of dolphins.

Fred McDowell, known by his stage name Mississippi Fred McDowell, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist of hill country blues music.

Ted Hawkins was an American singer-songwriter born in Biloxi, Mississippi. He split his time between his adopted hometown of Venice Beach, California, where he was a mostly anonymous street performer, and Europe and Australia, where he and his songs were better known and well received in clubs and small concert halls.

Booker T. Washington "Bukka" White was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. His first full-length biography, The Life and Music of Booker "Bukka" White: Recalling the Blues (2024), has been published by the University Press of Mississippi.

James Anthony Sullivan was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist who released two albums before he disappeared without a trace in New Mexico.

Francis Hillman "Scrapper" Blackwell was an American blues guitarist and singer, best known as half of the guitar-piano duo he formed with Leroy Carr in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Jake Xerxes Fussell is an American singer and guitarist who plays folk and blues music, with a focus on traditional Southern folk songs.

Elizabeth Eaton Converse was an American singer-songwriter, best known under her professional name Connie Converse. She was active in New York City in the 1950s, and her work is among the earliest known recordings in the singer-songwriter genre of music in the U.S. Before and after the period in which she wrote her music she was an academic, writer, and assistant editor for the Far Eastern Survey, and editor for the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Odetta Holmes, known mononymously as Odetta, was an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement", her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals.

James Timothy Hardin was an American folk music and blues singer-songwriter and guitarist. In addition to his own success, his songs "If I Were a Carpenter", "Reason to Believe", "Misty Roses" and "The Lady Came from Baltimore" were hits for other artists.

Judith Lynne Sill was an American singer-songwriter and composer. She was influenced by Bach, and wrote lyrics drawing on Christian themes of rapture and redemption.

Herbert Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s as an acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter. He recorded more than 28 albums and toured extensively from the 1960s to the 21st century.

J. B. Lenoir was an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter, active in the Chicago blues scene in the 1950s and 1960s. In The Encyclopedia of Popular Music he is described as both an "extrovert R&B man in the leopard-skin jacket who chanted infectious trifles" and a "thoughtful and intelligent writer of starkly honest blues songs."