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Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman May 24, 1941, Duluth, Minnesota, USA) is widely regarded as America's greatest popular songwriter. Stephen Foster, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and Hank Williams are among the few songwriters similarly revered for their enduring contributions to the American oeuvre.Much of his best known work is from the 1960s, when his musical shadow was so large that he became a documentarian and reluctant figurehead of American unrest. The civil rights movement had no more moving anthem than his song " Blowin' in the Wind." Millions of young people embraced his song " The Times They Are A-Changin'" during that era of extreme change. The radical insurgent group The Weathermen named themselves after a lyric in Dylan's song " Subterranean Homesick BluesSubterranean Homesick Blues a song written by Bob Dylan, was originally released on the album Bringing It All Back Home in 1965. It was re-released on several other albums such as Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits and has been covered by numerous recording artist" ("You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows").
More broadly, Dylan is credited with expanding the possible vocabulary of popular music, moving it beyond the traditional territory of boy-and-girl into the heady realms of politicsPolitics is the process and method of decision-making for groups of human beings. Although it is generally applied to governments, politics is also observed in all human group interactions including corporate, academic, and religious. Political science is, philosophyPhilosophy literally means 'love of wisdom' from the Greek 'philo' and 'sofia'. It is now widely used to designate the pursuit of knowledge or wisdom about fundamental matters concerning life, death, meaning, reality, being and truth. The term may also re, and a kind of stream-of-consciousness absurdist humor that defies easy description. This allows for a rich ambiguity and plurality of meaning uncommon in song up until his appearance. This lyrical innovation has occurred within the context of Dylan's steadfast devotion to the richest traditions of American song, from countryCountry music once known as Country and Western music is a popular musical form developed in the southern United States, with roots in traditional folk music, spirituals, and the blues. Vernon Dalhart was the first country singer to have a nation-wide hit/ bluesBlues is a vocal and instrumental musical form which evolved from African American spirituals, shouts, work songs and chants and has its earliest stylistic roots in West Africa. Blues has been a major influence on later American and Western popular music, to Scottish ballads, rockabilly to rock 'n' roll, even jazz, swing, and Broadway.
1 Beginnings
Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, to a Jewish family from Hibbing. He spent much of his youth listening to the radio, at first the powerful blues and country music stations beamed all the way from New Orleans, and later early rock and roll. He formed his first band, The Golden Chords, while still at high school. Around this time, Zimmerman chose the pseudonym Elston Gunn for himself, playing a few concerts as Bobby Vee's pianist under this name. An able but by no means brilliant student, he started university studies in 1959 in Minneapolis, during which time he was actively involved in the local Dinkytown folk music circuit. During his Dinkytown days Zimmerman began introducing himself as Bob Dylan. It has been suggested this choice was a tribute to the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Dylan has often denied this, claiming in 1965 that he took the name from an uncle named Dillon. He added "I've read some of Dylan Thomas' stuff, and it's not the same as mine.". He quit formal studies in early 1961 eventually drifting to New York City to perform and to visit his ailing idol Woody Guthrie. Playing in small clubs for next to no pay, he soon gained some recognition after a review in the New York Times ( September 29, 1961) by critic Robert Shelton, which led to John Hammond, a legendary music talent scout, signing him to Columbia Records.
At the time his voice, musicianship and songwriting were still raw. His performances, like his first Columbia album ( 1962's Bob Dylan), consisted of traditional folk, blues and gospel material interspersed with a few of his own songs. 1962 also saw Dylan recording some songs for Broadside (a folk music magazine that occasionally released recordings), under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt. By the time of his next record, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan ( 1963), he had begun to make his name as both a singer and composer, specialising in protest songs, initially in the style of Guthrie and soon practically developing his own genre. His songs of the time are typified by " Blowin' in the Wind", its melody partially derived from slave song "No More Auction Block", coupled with lyrics questioning the social and political status quo. With hindsight, the lyrics to some of these songs appear unsophisticated ("How many times must the cannonballs fly before they are forever banned"), but when compared to the largely anemic popular culture of the 1950s they were a breath of fresh air, and the songs caught the zeitgeist of the 1960s. "Blowin' In The Wind" itself was widely recorded and was an international hit for Peter, Paul and Mary, setting an enduring precedent for other artists to cover Dylan's songs. Somewhat overlooked among the protest songs on Freewheelin', however, was a mixture of finely crafted bittersweet love songs (" Don't Think Twice, It's Alright ", " Girl From the North Country ") and jokey, frequently surreal talking blues (" Talking World War III Blues ", " I Shall Be Free "). This eclecticism would continue to inform his material for much of his career.
While a fine interpreter of songs, Dylan was not widely considered a beautiful singer, and many of his songs first reached the public through versions by other artists. Joan Baez, a friend and sometime lover, took it upon herself to record a great deal of his early material, as did many others including The Byrds, Sonny and Cher, The Hollies, Manfred Mann and Herman's Hermits. So ubiquitous were these covers by the mid-1960s that CBS started to promote him with the tag: "Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan". Whoever sang his songs, they were immediately recognizable as his and a good part of his fame rested not only on his lyrical excellence but on the underlying attitude -- a sort of po' boy adrift in the wide world posture that gradually changed to hipster arbiter of all things cool and uncool.
