<Li> Randy & The Rainbows </Li> <Li> The Tokens (#1 Billboard Hot 100 hit with "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" in 1961) </Li> <P> Beginning in the 1940s, New York City was the center for a roots revival of American folk music . Many New Yorkers, especially young people, became interested in blues, Appalachian folk music, and other roots styles . In Greenwich Village, many of these people gathered; the area became a hotbed of American folk music as well as leftist political activism . </P> <P> The performers associated with the Greenwich Village scene, many of whom were not originally from New York, had sporadic mainstream success in the 1940s and 1950s; some, such as Pete Seeger and the Almanac Trio, did well, but most were confined to local coffeehouses and other venues . Performers such as Dave Van Ronk and Joan Baez helped expand the scene by appealing to college students . In the early 1960s, Baez was instrumental in introducing the up - and - coming young folk artist Bob Dylan to her audience and he quickly achieved national prominence . By the mid-1960s, folk and rock were merging, with Bob Dylan taking the lead in July 1965, releasing "Like a Rolling Stone," with a revolutionary rock sound for its time, steeped in tawdry New York City imagery, followed by an electric performance in late July at the Newport Folk Festival . Dylan plugged an entire generation into the milieu of the singer - songwriter, often writing from an urban, New York point of view . By the mid-to - late 1960s, bands and singer / songwriters began to proliferate the underground New York art and music scene . The release of The Velvet Underground & Nico in 1967, featuring singer - songrwriter Lou Reed and German collaborator Nico, was described as the "most prophetic rock album ever made" by Rolling Stone in 2003 . New York City in the mid-to - late 1960s gave birth to the contemporary singer / songwriter, with the urban landscape as a canvass for lyrics in the confessional style of poets like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath . In July 1969, Newsweek magazine's feature story, "The Girls - Letting Go," described the groundbreaking music of Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Lotti Golden, and Melanie as a new breed of female troubadour: "What is common to them are the personalized songs they write, like voyages of self discovery, startling in the impact of their poetry ." The work of these early New York - based singer / songwriters, from Laura Nyro's insightful New York Tendaberry, released in 1969, to Lotti Golden's adventurous East Village, Manhattan, diaries on Motor - Cycle, her 1969 debut on Atlantic Records, has served as inspiration to generations of female singer / songwriters in the rock, folk, and jazz traditions . The Guardian in January 2017 paid homage to the female singer / songwriters featured in Newsweek's July 1969 article, in a piece by Laura Barton: "Newsweek published an article under the headline' The Girls--Letting Go,' charting the burgeoning careers of a group of young musicians it termed' a new school of talented female troubadours .' They sang about politics, love affairs, the urban landscape, drugs, disappointment, and the life and loneliness of the itinerant performers, subjects that, hitherto, had largely been the preserve of male musicians ." New York would see a revived interest in folk and singer / songwriters in the 1980s and 1990s led by artists like Suzanne Vega . </P>

The primary new york destination for the folk scene beginning in the 1940s