Oh, I have little idea what he was saying c. 1960; Chronicles came out in the mid '00s. If I'm remembering what I read correctly, Dylan very early on in New York actually had a gig accompanying Belafonte on harmonica. Presumably if someone criticized Belafonte Dylan'd defend him, but I don't know if the press overheard this. In Robert Shelton's liner notes to his first album, along with mentioning Guthrie and Chaplin and old blues and country guys and current folkies like Elliott and Van Ronk, also mentions (or claims, since Dylan might have been pulling Shelton's leg) that Dylan dedicated the first song he'd ever written at age 15 or so to Brigette Bardot, and that he'd listened to Carl Perkins and early Elvis Presley. ("Early" is significant, as it might be a way of disassociating Dylan from Presley's more schmaltzy stuff post-Sun, though I really wonder how much of the folk audience would be aware of such distinctions.)