A report on The Lovin' Spoonful, American folk music revival and Greenwich Village

The band had its roots in the folk music scene based in the Greenwich Village section of lower Manhattan during the early 1960s.

John B. Sebastian, the son of classical harmonicist John Sebastian, grew up in the Village in contact with music and musicians, including some of those involved with the American folk music revival of the 1950s through the early 1960s.

Barred from mainstream outlets, artists like Seeger were restricted to performing in schools and summer camps, and the folk-music scene became a phenomenon associated with vaguely rebellious bohemianism in places like New York (especially Greenwich Village) and San Francisco's North Beach, and in the college and university districts of cities like Chicago, Boston, Denver, and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, bands like The Lovin' Spoonful and the Byrds, whose individual members often had a background in the folk-revival coffee-house scene, were getting recording contracts with folk-tinged music played with a rock-band line-up.

Greenwich Village also played a major role in the development of the folk music scene of the 1960s.

This list includes Eric Andersen, Joan Baez, Jackson Browne, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Richie Havens, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Ian, the Kingston Trio, the Lovin' Spoonful, Bette Midler, Liza Minnelli, Joni Mitchell, Maria Muldaur, Laura Nyro, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Carly Simon, Simon & Garfunkel, Nina Simone, Barbra Streisand, James Taylor, and the Velvet Underground.