Okay. ;-) Many of my favorite "folksingers" did record mostly their own original songs, but my sense of what a folksinger was was formed differently than yours, I guess. I think what you call a folksinger is what I would call a "traditional folksinger", most likely...meaning someone who does mostly trad songs.

Folk appealed to a certain kind of audience in North America in the 60's...as opposed to pop and rock or even country and blues. Folk in North America at that time appealed to an audience that focused very much on the words of the songs (this was not so in ANY other style of popular music)...and the songs tended to be about more serious subjects than was the case with any of the other music styles. They had philosophical and topical content in them. That's what the folk audience was looking for at that time. Trad songs were popular too, but they tended to take 2nd place to the topical stuff (and I don't just mean "protest" songs, but any songs that examined the human condition in some thoughtful way and commented on it). People like Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Ian Tyson, Tom Paxton, Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joni Mitchell, and various others were writing those kind of songs.

The folk audience was much quieter, much more analytical, much more political, and less there to "party" than was the case with the rock, the blues, or the country audience. You didn't dance to folk music... ;-) You listened...very attentively.

And that made for wonderful concerts, because you could hear every little thing. The audience was paying total attention to the music instead of having a big noisy party as is normally the case in a rock show. Dylan was perfect for that quiet folk audience in his early career. By the time he went electric, the whole scene was changing fast and fragmenting, and he helped speed up that process. I miss the days before the fragmenting occurred, but I don't particularly blame Dylan. It would've happened regardless. He just accelerated it some.