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' in the Wind album "From Every Stage". In 1975, the song was included as poetry in a high-school English textbook in Sri Lanka. The textbook caused controversy because it replaced Shakespeare's work with Dylan's. During the protests against the Iraq War, commentators noted that protesters were resurrecting songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" rather than creating new ones. The song has been embraced by many liberal churches, and in the 1960s and 1970s it was sung both in Catholic church "folk masses" and as a hymn in Protestant ones. In 1997, Bob Dylan performed three other songs at a Catholic church congress.