Chen Da was valued highly as a musician, both due to the emotional expressivity of his singing style, and the honesty his audience as well as most music scholars discovered in his delivery. As Liu Ching-chih writes, "the important question is whether or not a work of music expresses the true thoughts and emotions of the composer" respectively the creative ballad singer, "or, to put it another way," whether or not he "has made full use of his capacity for musical expression (technique) and moral strength (honesty)." Referring to socially and politically committed music, Liu added, "There are some good examples from the Anti-Japanese War" that showed how such music need not necessarily become cheap and superficial music, thus mere propaganda. The advent of the Campus Folk Song Movement (xiaoyuan minge yundong 校園民歌運動) in Taiwan – that was inspired by the American folk music revival – improved the perception and degree of appreciation of folk music in the early 1970s. The folk music revival in the U.S. had peaked in the second half of the 1960s. Partly due to the presence of American GIs, transferred to Taiwan – from the Vietnam battleground – for R&R (rest and recreation), songs by Bob Dylan and others, but also U.S. rock music arrived in Taiwan and were heard not only in U.S. clubs but also in Taiwanese "avant-garde" venues like the Scarecrow Coffee House and the Columbia Restaurant (both in Taipei) during the early 1970s. Commercial labels, radio and television slowly took note, as a small educated public discovered its taste for folk songs – especially American and British folk singers like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez or Judy Collins. Later, as the Campus Folk Song Movement gathered speed, it also led to the emergence of socially and politically committed "new" Taiwanese respectively Chinese folk music in Taiwan. It thereby created a receptive cultural environment (at least on campus) that made possible the discovery of Chen Da not only by musicologists but by campus youths. The presence of an urban audience that cared for foreign folk music encouraged Prof. Shih (史惟亮) and Hsu (許常惠) to contact a record company, on behalf of Chen Da, although without his knowledge. In 1971, they were able to invite the old folk singer to Taipei. The music critic Yatin Lin later on commented that "Shih Wei-liang (史惟亮) and Hsu Chang-hui (許常惠) ... brought him to the capital city of Taipei to record albums to preserve this 'dying' singing style."