Great commentary there, Don. The lines between Folk Songs and Singer/Songwriter Songs have always been a bit blurry to me, and your comments give at least some inkling as to why a traddy like Dylan decided to swing over into the songwriter mode.
The comments about the contrast between substance (a hardrock mining song, for example) and its presentation by a cleancut crew of college lettermen always struck me as incongruous and insincere, even as a lad of 11 years. Somehow, putting a drum behind those kids and letting them grow their hair long gave them more credibility to me as a teenager. But somewhere along the line most of us come to a place where we recognize that the strength is in the beauty and integrity of the song, not the style and popularity of the singer, and that the best a performer can do is find a song with meaning and try to do it justice.