A New and Concise History of Rock and R&B through the Early 1990s. Eric Charry

four albums hit #1.

      The key moment, however, was eighteen-year-old Joan Baez (1941–) guest singing with Bob Gibson at the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959. She represented a new generation of singers who drew on a diversity of folk material and sang in their own intimate interpretive voices. Baez quickly gained a recording contract with the independent downtown New York–based Vanguard label (turning down an offer from Columbia), hitting the Top 40 with ten of the twelve albums she released in the 1960s (four were in the Top 10). A Time magazine cover story on Baez in fall 1962 announced that the folk revival had swept the nation. She was the first folksinger star of this generation and introduced Bob Dylan (1941–) to her large audiences following the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. Dylan emerged as a star at that festival. Peter, Paul, and Mary had just given Dylan his first pop Top 10 chart appearance with their recording of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which had become something of an anthem for the times. Within a few months they would do it again with Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice” (see figures 28 and 29).