One more thing--I just plain disagree that pop music at the time Dylan was trying to get on the charts was awful. I was listening at the time to Sam Cooke, Roy Orbison, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, the Ronettes, The Shirelles, The Crystals, Tony Bennett (I still love him--just like my parents loved him at the time), The Drifters, and Little Stevie Wonder...

Sure, my tastes ran heavily towards R & B and soul, but I loved the music of the 60s everyone claims was so awful. Makes me think they only heard what was playing on the radio, or are mimicking what they have heard other people say about that era.

There was no musical wasteland at the time on the pop charts--the musical world had already begun the most major shift of the last half of the 20th century, and it had nothing to do with Dylan or the faux folkies like Baez, et al. It was the gradual easing of the color lines on radio.

And just for the record--I loved Gene Vincent, Joey Dee and the Starlighters, and by 1966 one of my favorite bands were the Young Rascals, and one of my favorite "singer-songwriters" was Johnny Rivers.