Raney-Mills Turner

MUSIC103

Dr. Robert Aubrey

10-21-02

Bob Dylan: A Legend

        “An artist inoculates his world with disillusionment,” said the infamous writer, Henry Miller.  Robert Allen Zimmerman, grandchild of Welsh-Jewish immigrants, was born on May 24, 1941 in Hibbing, Minnesota, near Duluth.  About fifteen years later, he took on the name Bob Dylan unknowingly stamping himself and his name in folk music history forever.

        Dylan began writing poetry and song lyrics at a young age and came to the name of Bob Dylan after the poet Dylan Thomas.  In 1959, Dylan attended the University of Minnesota emphasizing folk music but soon dropped his education to pursue his interest in music, his obsessions with Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. (.)  Dylan apparently started three prior bands to his own, “The Gaden Chords,” “Elston Gunn,” and “His Rock Boppers.”

        At eighteen, Dylan was eager to join Little Richard and soon followed his heart straight on into New York City.  By the beginning of the year 1961, he was renowned throughout Greenwich Village, the artist district of New York City, to play at coffeehouses throughout the area. (www.angelfire.com.) He could impressively learn songs simply by hearing them once, and soon, offers came flying from small nightspots such as “Ten Scholar Café” and  “St. Paul’s Purple Onion Pizza Parlor.”

        After local hearings and his simplistic way of playing the harmonica from albums from Harry Belafonte and Carolyn Hester, he was auditioned by John Hatmond in 1961 and eventually signed to Columbia Records.  

Join now!

        At the March of 1963 in Washington, D.C., Dylan voiced his opinion on the issues of civil rights in America by the power and magic of song.  At this time, he wrote “Only a Dawn in Their Game” about the death of Medgar Evers in Mississippi. Some fans called Dylan “leader of protest-song era of early sixties.”

        In 1965, Dylan shocked the fans with a mixture of “folk, rock, folk-rock, protest songs, electric blues, and Nashville style country.”  He was screaming freedom through songs such as “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” when all that seemed to ...

This is a preview of the whole essay