The person above who mentioned the word 'cool' was me. If you re-read my post you'll see I basically agree with you. I was disparaging contemporary attempts to make folk cool. I was saying that you can't force young people to like folk music: all you can do is tell people about good folk music when you encounter it, and hope other people like it.

That said, folk music did have a huge youth audience back then. So, whether or not you like the adjective 'cool', it clearly wasn't something irredeemably fogeyish. It was part of youth culture in a way it has never been since, and never will again. Besides, being famous or being popular isn't usually a signifier of 'cool' anyway. I'd be surprised if anybody who saw Bert Jansch play in 1965 thought he was a right square.