Bob Dylan, born under the name Robert Allen Zimmerman ( Duluth , 24 May 1941 ) is a songwriter and composer U.S.
Also a renowned writer , poet , painter , actor and radio host , is one of the most important figures of the last fifty years in music, in the popular culture and, according to many of the literature.
Most of his best-known songs dating back to the sixties , when the artist has set as a key figure in the movement, the American protest movement. Songs like “Blowin ‘in the Wind and The Times They Are A-Changin ‘ have become the anthems of the movement anti-war and for civil rights .
The texts of his early songs address topics political , social and philosophical and literary influences are affected by, challenging the conventions of pop music and appealing to the counterculture of the time.
Over the years, Dylan has expanded his musical style and personal touch in reaching many different genres as folk , country / blues , gospel , rock and roll , rockabilly , jazz and swing , and even popular music English , Scottish and Irish .
Robert Allen Zimmerman (Hebrew name: Avraham Zushi well) grew up in Hibbing , Minnesota, a city mining west of Lake Superior . His paternal grandparents, Zigman and Anna Zimmerman, emigrated from the town of Ukraine in Odessa in the United States after the pogrom anti-Semites of 1905 . Dylan himself wrote in his autobiography Chronicles – Volume 1 that the maiden name of his paternal grandmother was Kirghiz and his family was originally from Istanbul , although she grew up in Kagizman district of Kars , in Turkey, Eastern Europe. He also wrote that his paternal grandfather was of Trabzon , a city on the Turkish coast of the Black Sea . The maternal grandparents, Benjamin and Lybba Edelstein, were Jewish Lithuanian immigrants in America in 1902 . His parents, Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice “Beatty” Stone, were part of the small Jewish community in the area. Robert Zimmerman lived in Duluth for up to seven years. When his father fell ill with polio , the family returned to nearby Hibbing , where Zimmerman spent the rest of his childhood .One of Dylan’s childhood friends recalled Abram as a man severe and unwelcome and Beatty as a warm and friendly woman .
Zimmerman spent much of his youth listening to the radio , before the powerful stations Shreveport , which broadcast music, blues , country and later rock and roll .  During high school he formed several bands: the first, The Shadow Blasters, was short-lived, but the second, The Golden Chords, which played covers of popular songs and lasted longer. The performance of Dylan with Danny and the Juniors Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay at a school play was so heavy that the headmaster decided to turn off the microphones. of the school yearbook 1959 Robert Zimmerman wrote that his ambition was “Know Little Richard . ” The same year, using the name Elston Gunnn, he performed two concerts with Bobby Vee playing the piano and earned some applause. Zimmerman entered the University of Minnesota in the Twin City September 1959 and moved it to Minneapolis . His initial interest in rock and roll gave way to that for music folk , traditionally played on acoustic instruments. Dylan said in an interview on the subject: “My passion for folk music was born when I listened to Odetta . I heard his album in a store, even when the discs are listened there in the store. It was 1958 , more or less. Just then I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier to buy an acoustic guitar , a Gibson . ” The notes of the album Biograph Dylan explains the appeal of folk music exerted on him: ” The main question about the rock’n'roll for me was that however was not enough. Tutti Frutti and Blue Suede Shoes sentences were impressive and of great power and a driving rhythm and an overwhelming energy, but they were not serious things, and did not reflect the realities of life at all. I knew when I was dedicated to folk music , it was something much more serious. The folk songs are full of despair, sadness , triumph, faith in the supernatural , all feelings far more profound. [...] There is more real life in a single phrase of these songs than there were in all the themes of rock’n'roll. I needed that music. “
Now he started playing at 10 O’Clock Scholar, a coffee a few blocks from campus . He entered as the folk circuit of Dinkytown , he made friends with fans of folk and “borrowed” many of their albums. In Dinkytown days Zimmerman began to appear as Bob Dylan. In Chronicles – Volume 1 writes: “I wanted to go home and call myself Robert Allen [...] It seemed like the name of a Scottish king and I liked it.” Reading Downbeat magazine, he discovered the existence of a saxophone player named David Annyn. At the same time he met the poetry of Dylan Thomas . Zimmerman had to decide between Robert Allyn and Robert Dylan. “I did not decide, but the letter D is gaining strength,” he explained. He decided to “Bob” because there were many bobbies in popular music of the time.
New York and the first contract
Dylan left the college after the first year. He stayed in Minneapolis, working the folk circuit and made the trip to Denver , Madison and Chicago . In January of 1961 he moved to New York City to play and to visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie , who was admitted to the New Jersey Hospital . Guthrie was a revelation to Dylan and had a great influence on his early compositions. Dylan later said about the work of Guthrie that “You could hear his songs and at the same time learn to live.” In the hospital room he met an old friend of Dylan Guthrie, Ramblin ‘Jack Elliott , who return from a trip to Europe had gone to visit him. Dylan and Elliott became friends, and much of Guthrie’s repertoire was channeled through the production of this author (Dylan Elliott mentioned several times in Chronicles – Volume 1 ).
Between April and September 1961 Dylan played at various clubs in Greenwich Village and July 29 was a guest of the radio program Saturday Of Folk Music in which he played Acne Eric Von Schmidt duet with Ramblin ‘Jack Elliott, and Southern Mean Old Man with Danny Calbe , and three covers: Handsome Molly, Omie Wise and Poor Lazarus . Dylan drew the interest of the public after a positive review of Robert Shelton of the New York Times for a performance at Gerde’s Folk City in September 1961 . Also in September, Dylan was invited to play the ‘ harmonic by the singer folk Carolyn Hester on her third album, Carolyn Hester. John Hammond , a talent scout for Columbia Records and producer of the album of Hester, he noticed the talent of Dylan signed him the following month, allowing him to record his first album, Bob Dylan , which includes traditional folk songs, blues and gospel , as well as two unpublished same Dylan. The album did not have a big impact, he sold only five thousand copies in its first year, barely enough to pay the costs. Dylan’s Columbia Records considered as one of the follies of Hammond, which suggested that tear up the contract. Hammond defended Dylan vigorously, and even Johnny Cash became one of his powerful ally at Columbia.Despite the agreement just signed, Dylan recorded a dozen songs under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt for Broadside Magazine , a magazine and record label Music folk.
Nell ‘ in August of 1962 Dylan made two important changes in his career: he went to the Supreme Court of New York and changed his name to Robert Dylan and hired Albert Grossman as his manager . Grossman was Dylan’s manager until the seventies and it was important both for his personality at times provocative and protective for the great trust towards his main client. In the documentary No Direction Home: Bob Dylan , Dylan describes Grossman thus: “He looked like the manager of Elvis Presley knew it was coming from the perfume. Tensions between Grossman and John Hammond and Hammond led the producer to leave the place of young producer jazz Tom Wilson .
With his second album, The Freewheelin ‘Bob Dylan , released in May 1963 , he began to make a name as a singer and as an author. Many of the songs on the album were considered protest songs and were in fact inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by a passion for the songs on the current events of Pete Seeger . Oxford Town , for example, is a sardonic tale of ordeal of James Meredith , the first black student enrolled at ‘ University of Mississippi . One of his most famous songs, “Blowin ‘in the Wind , is in part its melody to the traditional song of the slaves , No More Auction Block, while the text holds forth on the status quo socially and politically. The song was taken up by many musicians and became an international hit for Peter, Paul and Mary , who created a precedent for many other artists who climbed the charts with a song by Dylan. The Dylan’s topical songs solidified his reputation, but Freewheelin ‘ also included love songs and jokes, and talking blues surreal. ‘S humor was part of Dylan’s character, and the material included on the album impressed many listeners including the Beatles . George Harrison said: “We have just heard, and quickly consumed it. The lyrical content and his attitude – it was incredibly original and wonderful. ”
The song A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall , built on the melody of the ballad folk Lord Randall, with its veiled references to ‘ nuclear apocalypse , had a great resonance after the missile crisis in Cuba , which took place a few months before ‘ Output of the song. As Blowin ‘in the Wind, A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall opened a new path in modern song, combining the technique of stream of consciousness and lyrics Imagist with traditional harmonic progressions of folk music.
Protest and Another Side
In 1963 Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were prominent figures in the movement for civil rights . They sang along to the meetings, as well as the March on Washington where Martin Luther King delivered his famous speech I Have a Dream . In January Dylan participated in a television series of the BBC , Madhouse on Castle Street, playing the guitar vagabond . The May 12 1963 on their skin felt the conflict with the media when he left by ‘ Ed Sullivan Show . Dylan had decided to play “Talkin ‘John Birch Paranoid Blues , but the authors of the program prevented him from playing it because it could potentially be defamatory to the John Birch Society , an association anticommunist . Given the censorship , Dylan refused to appear. His next album The Times They Are a-Changin ‘ , is the most political, cynical and sophisticated Dylan. This dark album, focusing on topics such as the murder of civil rights Medgar Evers and poverty generated by the collapse of the farm and mining towns ( Ballad of Hollis Brown , North Country Blues ), also contains two songs of love , Boots of Spanish Leather and One Too Many Mornings , and the defeatist Restless Farewell . The Brechtian The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll describes the true story of Hattie Carroll, a waitress in a hotel killed by a young bourgeois William Zantzinger. Although the song did not express it explicitly, there is no doubt that the murderess is a white and the victim is black.
In late 1963 , Dylan felt both manipulated and imprisoned by the folk and protest movement. At the ceremony for the Tom Paine Award from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee , a drunk and rambling Dylan “made nervous by the fact of being in an environment officer that he was not congenial, had repeatedly stressed that there had been a long time to become young but now he had succeeded and would invite the heads of those present to go bald in retirement in Florida . ” The audience, already perplexed, began to whistle when Dylan said he believed that to understand what was going through the mind of Lee Harvey Oswald , who, less than a month earlier, on 22 November 1963 , had shot President Kennedy . Dylan meant, as explained later, that both Oswald as he was subject to the same societal pressures, but could not make themselves understood and the ugly figure coincided with the end of his period of collaboration with grassroots political organizations. “
Recorded in one evening in June 1964 , Another Side of Bob Dylan covers issues than its predecessor. In I Shall Be Free # 10 and Motorpsycho Nitemare resurfaces the surrealism of Freewheelin ‘. Spanish Harlem Incident and To Ramona are romantic and passionate love songs, while Black Crow Blues and I Do not Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) refer to the beginning of Dylan’s music dominated by rock and roll . At first listen It Is not Me Babe may seem like a love song, but it is in fact a subtle and disgusted by the refusal of the role of Dylan affibbiatogli success. A new lyrical direction is evident in two songs: ‘s impressionistic Chimes of Freedom , in which the social commentary is accompanied by a landscape thick and metaphorical , a style later described by Allen Ginsberg as “chains of bright images,” and My Back Pages , which attacks the simplistic and malicious seriousness of its first topical songs and seems to predict the reaction that was about to unleash one of its former defenders when they take a new direction.