Answer: D. Bob Dylan

Dylan had already released "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and was emerging as an eloquent, if nasal, poet of protest when he performed at Kenyon in November 1964. He made his entry from the graveyard and launched into his first song, which, because of a temporary technical glitch, "sounded like mosquitoes caught in a net of Saran Wrap." The description was written by Jay Cocks '66, the future screenwriter, who chronicled the singer's Gambier trip in a lengthy Collegian article. Dylan seemed to win over "the predominantly conservative student body," and by the second half of the concert, people had abandoned their seats to crowd the floor near the front, wrote Cocks, whose piece would be republished in Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews (2006). Other musical greats who have graced the Rosse stage or Peirce Hall: Count Basie, Muddy Waters, John Coltrane, Bo Diddley, Odetta, Leo Kottke, Nina Simone, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.