Someone may have made the point already - and I'm certainly not going to read the whole thread - but the difference between the sixties' popularity and now is down to fashion. For a fleeting moment folk captured a counter cultural, back-to-nature mood that almost made its way into the mainstream.

Folk clubs were where you graduated when you'd finished with youth clubs. The fact a young man or woman could meet someone of the opposite sex while bathing in imagined history and tolerable beer didn't mean those individuals were serious folk enthusiasts or historians, clubs were simply the default night out for those who didn't fancy the Palais. My impression is the vibe lasted into the middle seventies but by the eighties folk clubs had degenerated into a happy clappy spin off of church groups with anything approximating folk music very much at a premium.
Last night I visited our local who had begun to have a folk groups and asked the bar girl if there was any music on. 'No', she admitted, 'not for a while. It was scaring the regulars away'.

That, as we may once have said, is where we're at.