It primarily featured pop-oriented folk music acts, including The Journeymen, The Limeliters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, The New Christy Minstrels, The Brothers Four, Ian & Sylvia, The Big 3, Hoyt Axton, Judy Collins, Johnny Cash, The Carter Family, Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, The Tarriers, Bud & Travis, Josh White, Josh White Jr., Leon Bibb, and the Smothers Brothers.

Although both popular and influential, the program is primarily remembered today for the controversy created when the producers blacklisted certain folk music acts, which then led to a boycott by others.

[3] Fred Weintraub, owner of The Bitter End, a folk music club in New York's Greenwich Village, served as talent coordinator (and would continue to do so throughout the series’ run), ensuring that performers would not be limited to clients of the Ashley-Steiner agency.

New York radio personality Jean Shepherd was the original emcee, and four folk acts appeared in the pilot: The Limeliters, Mike Settle, Jo Mapes and Clara Ward’s Gospel Singers.

[8] The first Hootenanny to air had been taped at the University of Michigan in March, and starred The Limeliters, Bob Gibson, Bud & Travis and Bonnie Dobson.

Record labels from the independent Folkways and Elektra to the mainstream Columbia and RCA-Victor released folk music compilation albums with "Hootenanny" in the title.

In an article for Shelton's Hootenanny magazine, Nat Hentoff savaged the program, writing "Aside from the fact that a sizable proportion of each week's cast has been echt fake, the 'Hootenanny Show' aura has also diluted the work of many of its performers with some credentials as folk singers."

Although the program continued to primarily showcase folk music, other genres were added to the mix: jazz (represented by such performers as Herbie Mann, Pete Fountain, Stan Getz and Stan Rubin's Tigertown Five), country (artists such as Johnny Cash, Eddy Arnold, Flatt & Scruggs and Homer & Jethro) and gospel (The Staple Singers, Clara Ward, Bessie Griffin and Alex Bradford).

The second season also added a spot for stand-up comedy; the best-known participants being Woody Allen, Bill Cosby (in his network TV debut), Jackie Vernon, Pat Harrington, Jr. and Stiller & Meara.

[17] That same week, several folk artists gathered at The Village Gate in New York City to discuss forming an organized boycott, but opted instead to send telegrams of concern to ABC executives, producer Lewine and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Nevertheless, by the end of March three other folk acts had joined Joan Baez in boycotting the show: Tom Paxton, Barbara Dane and The Greenbriar Boys, a bluegrass trio.

[20] Over the years, other arguably better-known folk performers have been associated with the Hootenanny boycott; these include Dylan (who mentioned the show in his song "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues"),[21] Peter, Paul & Mary, Phil Ochs and The Kingston Trio.

However, the ones who specifically announced their participation in the boycott at the time were Joan Baez, Barbara Dane, Tom Paxton, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and The Greenbriar Boys.

Some artists who had performed on the show would refuse future Hootenanny appearances for creative, rather than political, reasons; these include Judy Collins[22] and Theodore Bikel.

The 1964 British Invasion eclipsed the folk music craze among younger viewers, resulting in a decline in Hootenanny’s viewership to about seven million by the end of April 1964, prior to the start of reruns.

[25] Not only viewers, but musicians, were affected by the Invasion; performers such as Gene Clark (The New Christy Minstrels), John Phillips (The Journeymen), Cass Elliot (The Big 3) and John Sebastian (The Even Dozen Jug Band) - all of whom had appeared on Hootenanny's second season - abandoned folk music to form very successful pop-rock groups including The Byrds (Clark), The Mamas & the Papas (Phillips and Elliott) and The Lovin' Spoonful (Sebastian).

Faced with a dwindling talent pool, growing viewer indifference, and competition in the time slot from the Jackie Gleason Show airing on CBS, ABC announced on June 8 that Hootenanny would be cancelled.

Another series with youth appeal, The Outer Limits, moved into its Saturday evening timeslot, and ABC added a hastily scheduled Wednesday-night show with more broadly focused music: Shindig!

At the request of the then-president of Miles Laboratories, one of the show's sponsors, Hootenanny visited his alma mater, the small Salem College in Clarksburg, West Virginia (2nd season).