Carolyn Hester

Her producer, John H. Hammond, quickly signed Dylan to the label.

Hester remained relatively obscure throughout the folk music revival. She turned down the opportunity to join a folk trio with Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey. With Mary Travers the trio found stardom as, Peter, Paul, & Mary. Although Hester collaborated with Bill Lee and Bruce Langhorne, she concentrated exclusively on traditional material. In the late 1960s, unable to succeed as a folk-rock artist, she explored psychedelic music as part of the "Carolyn Hester Coalition" before drifting out of the music industry of the period.

Hester has disputed David Hajdu's depiction of her marriage to Fariña in his book Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña,. She also identified supposed exaggerations in his description of the relationships among Dylan, Baez, Hester, and the Fariñas. Hester denies that Farina was so close to Dylan, as some rock historians claim, and strongly disputes that Fariña was in any way responsible for Dylan’s success, as Hajdu insinuated. Hajdu also suggested that Hester had an ongoing rivalry with Baez and her sister Mimi. To this day, Hester maintains that to the contrary, she did not and does not know Baez well, and that they never were rivals, personally or professionally. Read Less