Matt;
The folk song revival was never more than a minority interest.
Having said that, it involved a fair number of devotees who took it fairly seriously.
The people I knew who walked away did so, not because they lost interested in the songs but because of the rapid decline in the places where it was possible to hear them.
The period was marked by a long-ish running debate in Folk Review under the title 'Crap Begets Crap'
Earlier there had been a sharp decline in audiences when the Music Industry lost interest in 'erzatz' folk song and moved on to pastures new, but the blandness of 'The Smothers Brothers at the Purple Onion', Peter Paul and Hairy's 'Puff the Magic Dragon' and The Kingston Trio's cabaret-like performances never really counted in my book - though I did dabble in many of them (but I never inhaled!)
One of the great failures of the revival was that it never caught the imagination of a wide audience.
As Tom has suggested - lots of gaps to fill, lots of intelligent non-agenda driven research needed.
I set out gathering old articles from magazines like Fred Dallas's 'Folk Song Magazine, Tradition, Traditional Topics... all of which I regularly visit when I need some information.. or simply just cheering up.
I can't begin to tell you was re-listening to MacColl's The Song Carriers or some of Bert Lloyd's Third Programme offerings does for my morale it manages to remind me that maybe I didn't waste a half century of my life - good days!!
Jim Carroll