Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer- songwriter, musician and artist. He has had a large impact in popular music and culture, but his best work came during the 1960’s. At the end of Bob’s freshman year of college he dropped out and in January 1961, he traveled to New York City with the hopes of becoming a performer. Bob Dylan first caught the attention of a producer while playing the harmonica for folk singer Carolyn Hester. John Hammond was the producer and he signed Bob to a contract with Columbia Records. Bob Dylan’s first album came in 1962 consisting of folk, blues, and gospel but making a little impact selling on 5,000 copies his first year. It was suggested by many that Hammond drop his contract after he barely broke even. However, Hammond defended Dylan with everything he could to keep the contract in place. Bob Dylan, while working under Columbia Records was also working Broadside Magazine, a folk music magazine and record label. In 1962 Robert Allen Zimmerman legally changed his name to Bob Dylan, and signed a management contract with Albert Grossman who remained his manager until 1970. Dylan left for United Kingdom in the winter of 1962 and wouldn’t return for a month. During this time he had been invited to appear in a TV drama on BBC Television. At the end of the play, Dylan performed “Blowin’ in the Wind”, one of his first major public performances of the song.  During his time in the UK, he also learned several new songs from performers he had met. When Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, came out in May of 1963 he began to make his name as both a singer and songwriter. Many of the songs on this album were labeled as protest songs. “Oxford Town”, for example, was about James Meredith, the first black student to risk enrollment at the University of Mississippi. Songs such as this questioned morals and protested against society and politic; marking a new direction in what was present day songwriting at the time. Dylan also included a mixture of love and humor in his album, things that were a large part of his life and who he was. Dylan’s rough voice was unsettling to some, but to others was an attraction. Joyce Carol Oates before marrying Dylan said, “When I first heard this raw, very young, and seemingly untrained voice, frankly nasal, as if sandpaper could sing, the effect it had was dramatic and electrifying”. The Byrds; Sonny and Cher; The Hollies; Peter, Paul and Mary; The Association; Manfred Mann; and The Turtles; all had hits with Dylan’s songs in the early and mid-1960s. These artists wanted to have a pop feel and rhythm in their songs, while Dylan and Baez (his wife at the time) performed them mostly as folk pieces. 

Dylan made another album in April of 1965, “Bringing it All Back Home”, and made another change in the style of music featuring electric instruments. The first single, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, has been described as “both harkening back to the manic energy of Beat poetry and as a forerunner of rap and hip-hop”. Dylan also came up with the idea of throwing cue cards containing key words from the song on the ground, something that is used commonly in music videos and advertisements today. Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” quickly became one of his best-known songs when The Byrds recorded an electric version that reached number one in both the U.S. and the U.K. charts. However in 1965, during his appearance at a Folk Festival he played at the previous three years, he was booed of stage some say because of his transformation to electric. Dylan then went back to the recording studio making songs widely interpreted as Dylan’s put-down of former friend from the folk community. Naming the song “Positively 4^th Street” after the friends he had known in clubs along West 4^th Street. The song had images of vengeance and paranoia in his lyrics and words.