Robert Zimmerman was born in Hibbing, Minn., in 1941 and emerged as Bob Dylan, (a name derived from of his love for Dylan Thomas’ poetry), some time around 1960 in Minneapolis. He moved to New York in 1961 and became proficient at covering folk songs he had first heard only a few years earlier. By the end of the year, Dylan had recorded his first album, Bob Dylan, released in March of 1962, with help from John Hammond of Columbia Records. It included only two original songs: Talkin’ New York and Song to Woody.

During his early days in Greenwich Village, there were two significant subcultres of youth: the folk singers and the beat poets. The folk singers sang songs from the 20’s and 30’s, mostly rural American, while the beats preferred jazz, claiming local coffee shops as their stomping grounds. Though it was unfashionable for these cultures to mix, Dylan, only 21at the time, was fascinated by everything, including beats like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Dylan put out three more albums between 1963 and1964, (Another Side of Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a’Changin’, and The Freewheeling Bob Dylan), which not only increased his notoriety within the folk community but also helped him fine tune his now prolific songwriting. These songs were mash ups from classic folk melodies, old lines found in the Anthology of American Folk Music and Dylan’s smart and vicious social commentary.

By 1965, Dylan had befriended Ginsberg, who was famous in the counter-culture for stream of conscious poetry, Howl being his best known work. Perhaps because of this friendship, Dylan’s songs began to miss the social core of a protest singer and his themes became difficult, if not impossible, to follow with the release of Bringing It All Back Home that spring. Also important for this record was the shift to electric music; side A is electric, side B acoustic. A few months after this album’s release, the famous controversy at the Newport Folk Festival occurred when Dylan took the stage and played Like A Rolling Stone, which would be released on Highway 61 Revisited.

Lineup

• Molly Parden
• Micah Dalton
• Chantae Cann
• Tyler Lyle
• Tim Brantley
• Jeremy Aggers and The Tamers