Leaving this 1954 thing aside for a mo', and all its socio-cultural-political baggage (both real and imagined)I would like to provide a refreshingly different perspective (he said modestly). When I was a child I always liked 'story songs' - or 'narrative songs' as my more pretentious older self calls them. This interest continued through my childhood and adolescence. Meanwhile many of my contemporaries preferred 'guitar-based popular music which rocked'. In my late teens I discovered my local folk club and a veritable cornucopia of narrative songs. Nevertheless, the ubiquitous, guitar-based rocking stuff was waiting in the wings just dying to take over; and in some clubs, of course, it did.

To my mind narrative songs and guitar-based rocking stuff provide different sorts of pleasures (although, of course, there are overlaps). But the guitar-based rocking stuff is, as I said above, virtually ubiquitous and much more popular while narrative songs are a more specialised interest - and there is nothing wrong with that!