There was a big fuss in the courts over the use of the term when a local singer/song writer/entertainer and early tv star Sheriff Tex, who played a contraption, a washboard/sound effects gizmo he called his Hootenanny Annie, contested the use of the term by the tv show Hootenanny. He claimed that he had created the word and therefore held the rights to it's use and that their use of it for the program was an infringement. I don't know how the courts decided. I do have a copy of the song Hootenanny Annie on a 78rpm which places it's use by Sheriif Tex well before that of the 60s tv show.