Irv Letofsky, subbing for Will Jones, started his October 7, 1963, column:  “I was sitting around the living room the other morning waiting for folk singing to die.  I was hoping they would kill each other off.  But now they’ve collected into hootenanny gangs and proliferate.”  He goes on about the latest Peter, Paul and Mary album, which contains three songs by “22-year-old Bob Dylan, the sulking Minnesota expatriate.  Of these, two are inconsequential” [that would include “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right”] but he was duly impressed with “Blowin’ in the Wind.”  “Anyone who watched the TV coverage of the civil rights march on Washington and heard Peter, Paul and Mary sing it before the quarter million demonstrators must have been touched.  It was haunting.  If nothing else survives this era of social protest after all the profits are taken out of it, this one may.”

More Irv Letofsky (he’s funny), October 11, 1963:  “I was trying to do my bit to help drown out folk singing – when I’m besieged.  Two young nuts named Gary Flanders and Bob Liebo went into the booking business through Metropolitan Enterprises, they call it.  Their first effort will be the Midwest Hootenanny, they call it [October 12] at Convention Center in Bloomington.”  Stars:

• The Travelers Three
• The Contemporary Folk Group, a rising local company
• Maxine Sellers
• Robert Glaze – the last two singers from Chicago