Answer

Bob Dylan’s Biography

Introduction

Bob Dylan whose birth name was Robert Zimmerman is an American song writer and singer born on 24^th May 1941 to Abram and Beatrice Zimmerman at a hospital in Duluth, Minnesota.  During his childhood years, they resided at Duluth where his parents were members of a close-knit Jewish community. It was not until he was six that they moved from Duluth and went to Hibbing, his mother’s hometown, as a result of his father getting ill with Polio. They lived in Hibbing for the rest of his childhood where he grew up and attended high school. He spent his early years listening to the radio where he preferred listening to the blues and country music while he was a child then he shifted to rock and roll during his teenage years (Maymudes 2014).

 During his years in high school, he was a member of several bands and he performed music that was sung by Little Richard and Elvis Presley. After high school, he moved to Minneapolis where he joined Minnesota University where he began to perform at a coffee house that made him get involved with the Dinky town fork music circuit. This was the beginning of his illustrious music career which has revolutionized the pop genre (Dylan 2014). He was married to Sara Lowndes with whom they had 4 children and divorced after being married for 12 years. He got married again to Carol Dennis with whom they had a child together before they divorced after 6 years in marriage.

It was during his time with the Dinky town fork music circuit that he began to refer to himself as Bob Dylan; the name was inspired by the poetry of Dylan Thomas. Dylan dropped out of college in 1960 and went to New York to visit his ailing music idol Woody Guthrie as well as to perform Guthrie’s music given that Dylan’s earlier performances had been influenced greatly by him. Dylan started playing his own music in pubs where he started learning more about folk music from the singers he encountered such as Dave Van Ronk and Oddetta. Suze Rutolo, Dylan’s girlfriend whom she met in 1961 and was in a relationship with until 1964 was also instrumental in the classic songs sung by Dylan (Dylan 2014).

Dylan got public recognition when Robert Shelton wrote in the New York Times about a show he had performed really well. During the same month, he was signed to Columbia records by John Hammond, who recognized his talent during his performance in Carolyn Hester’s release of her third album where he was playing the harmonica. The first album he produced was titled, “Bob Dylan” and some of its debut songs consisted of folk songs which were authored by other singers, but he revised the songs and sang them again.

He released his second album titled “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” which contained some of his original songs, such as A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” The album contained his song titled “Blowing in the wind,” which was the song that made me choose to write about Bob Dylan as I was impressed by the way it motivated the American civil rights movement.  The composition of the song also made me like the song thus made me a fan of his music from then henceforth. Majority of the songs he produced in the second album were labelled as protest songs, which were inspired by his music idol, Woody Guthrie. Dylan’s singing of topical songs enriched his earlier reputation and grew his identity not only as a singer and a songwriter, but also as the voice of his generation. Advocating for the rights of the people was and still is a major inspiration for most of the songs sung and produced by Bob Dylan.

Janet Maslin described Dylan as a person who understood how young Americans felt about topical issues such as nuclear disarmament and the civil rights movement among many other social issues that he sung about. The use of humor in Dylan’s albums as well as the different kinds of content used in producing the album attracted admiration from many, including the Beatles. When the Beatles listened to Dylan’s second album, they appreciated his work for its originality. Other musicians who were influenced by Dylan include the Byrd’s, Sonny as well as Paul and Mary. Dylan was highly influential to the Byrd’s especially when they were establishing themselves as he was a major source of inspiration to the Byrd’s during this time.  Paul and Mary also attribute their establishment to him as they recorded and sang his music (Wilentz, 2010).

During the early sixties he met with the Beatles who inspired him to start exploring the rock and roll genre. This is when he released the album “Bringing It All back home,” which comprised of songs such as “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Maggie’s Farm”. During this performance, he used the acoustic and the electric guitar. During a performance of the album at Newport, the fans booed him when he used the electric guitar. In July 1965, the hit single, “Like a Rolling Stone,” which was contained in the album “Highway 61 revisited,” had a massive impact on the pop culture. The album had been released in the same year and the hit single was ranked at second and fourth place in the US and UK charts respectively. During his initiation into the Rock and roll hall of fame, Bruce Springsteen said that the song sounded as if someone was knocking at the door the first time he heard the song (Sheehy & Swiss, 2009).

After the release of “Highway 61 revisited,” Dylan toured the US and Canada where he met the Hawks and collaborated with them to create the double album titled “Blonde on Blonde.” He toured the UK again after the release of the album and came back home the following year where he was involved in an accident near his home in New York and broke his neck. When he recovered he released more albums, until in 1973, his album the “Concert of Bangladesh” won the Grammy Award for best album of the year. In the seventies he also appeared in a movie “Pat Garret and Billy the kid” as well as the movie he directed and acted known as the “Renaldo and Clara” (Wilentz 2010). After his contract expiry, he signed with Asylum and was able to release two albums “Planet Waves” and “Before the Flood”. Later, he signed again with Columbia and released “Blood on Tracks”. Dylan converted to Christianity in 1979, which reflected in his next albums, “Slow train coming”, “Shot at Love” and “Saved”.

Dylan has received several awards including 11 Grammy Awards, the latest award came in 2007 for the best solo vocal performance of the song “Someday Baby,” he got an Oscar Award for the song “Things Have Changed.” President Barack Obama also awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom (Dylan 2014).  Among his achievements is that he was able to perform for Pope John Paul II in Bologna Italy. He also performed at the event Martin Luther King Jr., released his famous speech “I Have a Dream”.

Conclusion

In his long and illustrious career that has spanned over five decades, Bob Dylan’s music has been able to have an impact on society. His music has been dominant in revolutionizing the folk genre. The lyrics of his music, which addressed various issues within society, had political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. The social problems that faced the society where the things he sang about in his songs, which inspired the civil rights movements. Since he began his career till present, the society at large has benefited from his music.