4 Musical Superstars of the 1960s Who Helped Launch Other Future Stars’ Careers

Despite the music industry’s well-deserved reputation of being a cutthroat business, there have been plenty of musical superstars who helped launch the careers of other future stars. Some artists, like Joan Baez and Porter Wagoner, ushered in new talent even when their audiences protested against it.

Others simply saw potential and acted on it, like Kris Kristofferson stumbling upon John Prine in an unassuming bar in Chicago. In any case, these stars’ decision to lend a helping hand gave a whole new meaning to the adage “iron sharpens iron.”

Let’s take a look at four of the most notable instances of 1960s superstars holding the door open for future contemporaries, colleagues, and icons in their own right.

Joan Baez and Bob Dylan

In hindsight, it’s hard to believe there was ever a time when Joan Baez was more well-known than Bob Dylan. But such was the case in the early 1960s when Baez solidified herself as the queen of the folk revival scene, which largely centered around traditional and protest music. Folk superstar Baez invited Dylan on stage while he was still a relatively unknown troubadour, even admonishing those who spoke poorly of Dylan because of his unkempt appearance and distinctive voice, which played a pivotal role in the launch of his career.

Ultimately, the pair would split ways in the mid-1960s. “Joan wanted Dylan to show up at marches and be more political, but it just wasn’t his interest,” the filmmakers of Baez’s documentary, Don’t Look Back, explained to Rolling Stone. “While it was devastating for her at the time, now, she’s simply grateful. ‘He spent that time writing the beautiful songs we used,’ Baez told us. She was sorry that she demanded so much of him. ‘It simply wasn’t who he was or who he wanted to be.’”

Kris Kristofferson and John Prine

In the summer of 1971, John Prine was playing a quiet bar gig while Kris Kristofferson was finishing up a three-night stint at Quiet Night in Chicago. Kristofferson’s opener, Steve Goodman, insisted that Kristofferson catch Prine’s set before he left the city, and the headliner obliged. By the time he and his entourage made it to where Prine was playing, the bar was almost closed. “All the rest of the tables had chairs turned upside down on them, so they were sitting two feet in front of the stage, and I’m doing a show for those four people,” Prine later recalled.

“I sang about six or seven songs. Then, I sat down to have a beer with Kris. When I was done with the beer, he asked if I would sing those same six or seven songs again,n plus anything else I wrote,” he continued. Kristofferson was an instant fan and began introducing Prine to other colleagues in the industry, helping lead Prine to his first record deal with Atlantic that same year.

Bob Dylan and Charlie Daniels

Charlie Daniels might be an iconic name now, but when he was trying to make a name for himself in the late 1960s, he was, in his words, “the low man on the totem pole.” Daniels had moved to Nashville at the behest of his friend, Bob Johnson, producer for several notable acts, including Simon and Garfunkel, Marty Robbins, and Johnny Cash. When Johnson began working with Bob Dylan for his 1969 record Nashville Skyline, Daniels asked his friend for an in. “I said, ‘Any way you can put me on one Dylan session? I’m such an admirer of his,’” Daniels recalled in an interview with AXS TV’s Dan Rather.

As fate would have it, Dylan had 15 sessions booked for the album, and the lead guitarist wasn’t available for the first one. So, Daniels sat in. “When I got finished, I was packing my instruments up to leave, and Bob Dylan asked Bob Johnson, ‘Where’s he going?’ [Johnson] said, ‘He’s leaving. I got another guitar player coming.’ [Dylan] said, ‘I don’t want another guitar player. I want him.’ Those nine words meant more to me and were such a shot in the arm to me and such an encouragement.”

Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton

Country superstar and host of his widely popular, eponymous music show Porter Wagoner first heard of Dolly Parton as she was trying to launch her career on her own in Nashville in the mid-1960s. By 1967, he invited Parton to come to his office with her guitar. She played a few songs for him, then after a long pause, Wagoner invited Parton to replace his former “singing girl,” Norma Jean, who was leaving the show to start a family in Oklahoma. It was a huge break for Parton, but it wasn’t without its fair share of downsides.

“For the first year or so that I appeared with Porter, the words I heard most often were, ‘Where’s Norma Jean?’” Parton later wrote in her 1994 biography, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “I could understand their loyalty to her, but I could have done without their yelling for her in the middle of my number.” Nevertheless, Parton called her stint on the Porter Wagoner Show to be “the most prosperous, productive, and growth-filled” seven years of her life.

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