Original name ROBERT ALLEN ZIMMERMAN American folk singer who moved from folk to rock music in the 1960s, infusing the lyrics of rock and roll, heretofore concerned mostly with boy-girl romantic innuendo, with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry. Hailed as the Shakespeare of his generation, Dylan sold more than 58 million albums, wrote more than 500 songs recorded by more than 2,000 artists, performed all over the world, and set the standard for lyric writing.
He grew up in the northeastern Minnesota mining town of Hibbing, where his father CO-owned Zimmerman Furniture and Appliance Co. Taken with the music of Hank Williams, Little Richard, Elvis Prestley, and Johnny Ray, he acquired his first guitar in 1955 at age 14 and later, as a high school student, played in a series of rock and roll bands. In 1959, just before enrolling at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, he served a brief stint playing piano for rising pop star Bobby Vee. While attending college, he discovered the bohemian section of Minneapolis known as Dinkytown. Fascinated by Beat poetry and folk singer Woody Guthrie, he began performing folk music in coffeehouses, adopting the last name Dylan (after the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas). Restless and determined to meet Guthrie-- who was confined to a hospital in New Jersey-- he relocated to the East Coast.
Arriving in late January 1961, Dylan was greeted by a typically merciless New York City winter. A survivor at heart, he relied on the generosity of various benefactors who, charmed by his performances at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village, provided meals and shelter. He quickly built a cult following and within four months was hired to play harmonica for a Harry Belafonte recording session. Responding to Robert Shelton's laudatory New York Times review of one of Dylan's live shows in September 1961, talent scout-producer John Hammond, Sr., investigated and signed him to Columbia Records. There Dylan's unkempt appearance and roots-oriented song material earned him the whispered nickname "Hammond's Folly."
Dylan's eponymous first album was released in March 1962 to mixed reviews. His singing voice-- a cowboy lament laced with Midwestern patois, with an obvious nod to Guthrie-- confounded many critics. It was a sound that took some getting used to. By comparison, Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (released in May 1963), sounded a clarion call. Young ears everywhere quickly assimilated his quirky voice, which divided parents and children and established him as part of the burgeoning counterculture, "a rebel with a cause." Moreover, his first major composition, "Blowin' in the Wind," served notice that this was no cookie-cutter recording artist. About this time Dylan signed a seven-year management contract with Albert Grossman, who soon replaced Hammond with another Columbia producer, Tom Wilson.
As the 1990s drew to a close, Dylan, who was called the greatest poet of the second half of the 20th century by Allen Ginsberg, performed for the pope at the Vatican, was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, received the John F. Kennedy Center Honors Award, and was made Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters (the highest cultural award presented by the French government). In 1998, in a comeback of sorts, he won three Grammy Awards-- including album of the year-- for Time Out of Mind.
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Arriving in late January 1961, Dylan was greeted by a typically merciless New York City winter. A survivor at heart, he relied on the generosity of various benefactors who, charmed by his performances at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village, provided meals and shelter. He quickly built a cult following and within four months was hired to play harmonica for a Harry Belafonte recording session. Responding to Robert Shelton's laudatory New York Times review of one of Dylan's live shows in September 1961, talent scout-producer John Hammond, Sr., investigated and signed him to Columbia Records. There Dylan's unkempt appearance and roots-oriented song material earned him the whispered nickname "Hammond's Folly."
Dylan's eponymous first album was released in March 1962 to mixed reviews. His singing voice-- a cowboy lament laced with Midwestern patois, with an obvious nod to Guthrie-- confounded many critics. It was a sound that took some getting used to. By comparison, Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (released in May 1963), sounded a clarion call. Young ears everywhere quickly assimilated his quirky voice, which divided parents and children and established him as part of the burgeoning counterculture, "a rebel with a cause." Moreover, his first major composition, "Blowin' in the Wind," served notice that this was no cookie-cutter recording artist. About this time Dylan signed a seven-year management contract with Albert Grossman, who soon replaced Hammond with another Columbia producer, Tom Wilson.