Famed musician Bob Dylan (Robert Allan Zimmerman) was born in Duluth, Minnesota on May 24, 1941 to a middle class suburban family. When Dylan was young, he took an active interest in both songwriting and guitar/harmonica playing, something that would influence the trajectory of the rest of his career and life choices. Bob Dylan attended Hibbing High School, in Hibbing, Minnesota, after moving there when he was six years old, and was an amazing student who enjoyed studying Latin and music theory. Something that would influence a bulk of his songwriting, especially in his later career.
After graduating High School in the year 1959, Dylan decided to move out to New York City and crashed on various couches in the famed Greenwich Village section of the city. In the early 1960’s, Bob Dylan decided to take a chance on his written songs, and record some tracks for Columbia records, a move that would garner him future worldwide fame, and cement him as being one of the greatest as well as influential musicians in recorded history. Dylan’s earliest albums were seen as being essential to the folk-rock genre, one which Dylan was a part of culturally, and the rest of the 1960s was seen as the artists heyday’s with album releases such as 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited or his critically acclaimed 1966 album Blonde on Blonde.
Bob Dylan has written some of the most thought provoking, as well as culturally significant songs ever made, with some to check out being “Like a Rolling Stone” “Blowin’ In The Wind” “Just Like A Woman” “Tangled Up In Blue” “ All Along The Watchtower” “Knockin’ On Heavens Door” “The Times They Are A-Changin’” ’“Hurricane” and my own personal favorite song of his “Lay Lady Lay” released on his 1969 album Nashville Skyline.
At the height of Bob Dylan’s worldwide popularity, it is safe to say that the artist broke new grounds in recording and writing songs from the perspectives of a man who was on a mission to speak his mind freely though music, as well as to bring some new light to the many issues surrounding the country during the very turbulent and whimsical era that the 1960’s was. This month, Dylan will be turning 83 years old, and the best of luck to him these next few years as he is still touring and releasing new music on a frequent basis. His debut album was released in March, 1962, and his most recent being in June, 2023, both worth listening too if you get a chance. Bob Dylan has been a musical powerhouse with over 60 years of a recorded catalog, one which will stand the test of time as being some of the best musical work to ever be released.
