Columbia Records: Folk-Rock Fulcrum

Written by

Charlie Gillett

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

History

Columbia was the slowest of the major labels to realize that the youth market was not going to disappear, but by the end of the 1960s it had become the most aggressive company in pursuing that audience. Having previously had no substantial rock-and-roll star (apart from belatedly signing Dion at the end of 1962), Columbia—through a mixture of luck and foresight—wound up with three of the main folk-rock acts of the mid-1960s: Bob Dylan, the...