"Why did we all try to sound like Dylan once upon a time?"

As Tonto said when he and the Lone Ranger were surrounded by hostile Indians and the Lone Ranger asked, "What do we do now, Tonto?"

"What you mean we, paleface?"

I know lots of singers of folk songs who did not (and do not) try to sound like Dylan, nor did they ever want to sound like him.

But I take your point.

I saw a young black singer at the Purple Onion back in 1959. He wore tight black pants, a red shirt open to the navel, and he was accompanied by a guy sitting on a stool behind him and playing a classic guitar. All the songs he sang, he had obviously learned from Harry Belafonte's records. He was really quite good. Very nice singing voice. Except that he was trying to sing with a sort of "husky" voice, like Belafonte has.

The pity of it was that he did have a fine singing voice of his own—when he let it out. But he was trying to be Harry Belafonte. Had he just sung in his own natural voice, developed a repertoire of his own, and dressed a bit differently rather than trying to look like someone else, he quite possibly could have been first rate. Instead, doing what he was doing, he could never be more than second-rate Belafonte. Belafonte got to be Belafonte because he was unique.

If everyone sounds like everyone else, people can't tell one from another. Hard to become a big star that way.

Don Firth