Blowin' in the Wind Trio, but their record company delayed release of the album containing it because the song included the word "death", so the trio lost out to Peter, Paul and Mary, who were represented by Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman. The single sold a phenomenal 300,000 copies in the first week of release and made the song world-famous. On August 17, 1963, it reached number two on the "Billboard" pop chart, with sales exceeding one million copies. Peter Yarrow recalled that, when he told Dylan he would make more than $5,000 () from the publishing rights, Dylan was speechless. Peter, Paul and Mary's
Blowin' Your Mind! compares "the delighted contempt of the singer, the song's graveyard pace, the stately organ and stinging guitar" to the "Highway 61" period of Bob Dylan. Allmusic gave the album a 3-star rating and wrote that "Although Van Morrison's first solo album is remembered for containing the immortal pop hit "Brown Eyed Girl," "Blowin' Your Mind!" is actually a dry run for his masterpiece, "Astral Weeks"." Entertainment Weekly gave it a B-rating, noting that it "displays the pitfalls of late-'60s blues rock: meandering solos, hippie sentiments, and the occasional fuzz-tone guitar. But in the hand of Van the Man, those vices