An academic is just another consumer and too few will confess to that Karen Carpenter or The Archies purchase back in the day. Too, their calendars are usually off by a decade or three.

Pop music is a hundred and eleventeen lane, one-way expressway. Folk gets a bin in the record store but no statuette at the awards banquet. Harry Belafonte had the most commercial succe$$. Never was the day he wasn't bracketed in the charts by a younger and hipper Elvis and a younger and squarer Pat Boone.

Rock Around the Clock released in 1954 as mainstream Brill Building rock. The Brothers Four original Greenfields is the only folk offering on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1960. The other 99 are not a lot of rock and roll. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones will both launch as the same sort of cover bands... matching coifs, wardrobes and all... as the Kingston Trio et al.

If there is one thing to say about the change in 1970 Hot 100 chart it's the general rise of the singer-songwriter and modernist lyrics topping out with Simon & Garfunkle at #1…. And right behind at #2?… The Carpenters, still not rock n' roll or folk.