Also, most of the folksingers I was initially most inspired by were themselves....girls! (or women, if you prefer)

Thus it would hardly seem that I would see doing folksinging as a means of "getting girls", given such influences. Rather more a means of emulating their magnificent creative accomplishments as best I could...

(I'm referring to Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joan Baez, and Judy Collins, in particular...at that time.)

Later (for me) Dylan came along, of course. I got to know him, in fact, by listening to Joan Baez cover his songs. Joan did a whole lot to win Bob acceptance back then.

For me, folk music was a combination of impassioned social idealism, good taste, intelligence, and artistic expression that could hardly be matched in any other field except serious literature, and music is more outgoing than literature.

I was far more concerned about political/social issues than virtually any other teenager I knew in Skaneateles, New York, which was the very heartland of braindead small-town American conservatism...and probably has still not graduated out of the 50's mentality yet to this day. The only thing they lacked was a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. The only exception I knew to that state of mind around there was Larry Gurevitch, who loved Dylan and the Doors and was a true radical. I haven't seen him in 33 years. I hope you are doing well, Larry.

"Getting girls"? Naw. That was why teenage guys joined rock bands, I think...which were virtually an all-male preserve in those days. I despised rock bands when I was in my teens, but finally got to like some of them later, in my twenties.

I thought (at the time) that the way to get girls was to be deeply idealistic and totally honest! Man, was I naive or what???? :-) My love life as a teenager was comparable to that of Robinson Crusoe, minus the possibility of even his Man Friday as a last remote hope for some intimate form of human contact.

But I sure enjoyed the music! Thank you, Buffy, Joan, Judy, Bob, Ian, Sylvia, and all the rest!

- LH