Bob Dylan
November 1960 Today was my last official day at the University of Minnesota. I have decided to move to New York and where my idol, the legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie, is hospitalized with a rare hereditary disease of the nervous system. For the past 19 years I have been living with my parents in Dunluth, Minnesota. I was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941. My father, Abe Zimmerman works for a standard oil company and my grandparents were Jewish Russian immigrants. In 1947 we moved to the small town of Hibbing. I started writing poems and songs when I was ten and mid way through my teens I taught myself rudimentary piano and guitar. Last year I graduated High School and decided to attend the University of Minnesota. My influences in the past years have been Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and other early rock stars. I played in bands all through my teens. I had so much fun playing in those bands. I often laugh when I think about those band names such as the Golden Chords and Elston Gunn and the Boppers. My goal at this time was to be just like Little Richard. He was my idol and I wanted to be just like him. I love all types of music, Country, Rock, Jazz, and of course Folk. I headed off to college in th
e fall of last year and it just wasn't for me. So now with it being my last day I'm saying goodbye to my home state of Minnesota and moving to New York. It's a big step but its something that I need to do. (http://www.discographynet.com/dylan/dylan.html) January 1963 Today is a very special day for me. I have just released my first album entitled Bob Dylan. It is an incredible feeling. A lot has happened since the last time I have wrote in this Journal. I officially changed my name. I have gone from Robert Allen Zimmerman to Bob Dylan as people know me as. I had two goals when I left Minnesota two years ago. To become a part of Greenwich Village's burgeoning folk-music scene, and to meet Woody Guthrie, who was hospitalized in New Jersey with a rare, hereditary disease of the nervous system. I am proud to say I succeeded on both counts. I became a fixture in the Village's folk clubs and coffeehouses and at Guthrie's hospital bedside, where I would perform the folk legend's own songs for an audience of one. Spending all of my spare time in the company of other musicians, I amazed them with my ability to learn songs perfectly after hearing them only once. I also began writing songs at a remarkable pace, including a tribute to my hero entitled Song to Woody. (http://www.discographynet.com/dylan/dylan.html) Indeed, my interest in music have become so intense that I rarely find the time to go to class. I began to perform solo at local nightspots like the Ten o'clock Scholar cafe and St. Paul's Purple Onion Pizza Parlor, honing my guitar and harmonica work and developing the expressive nasal voice that would become the nucleus of my soon to be trademark sound. It was around this time, too, that I adopted the stage name Bob Dylan, presumably in honor of the late Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. In the fall of 1961, my music began to spread beyond folk circles and into the world at large after critic Robert Shelton saw me perform at Gerde's Folk City and he raved in the New York Times that I was "bursting at the seams with talent." A month later, Columbia Records executive John Hammond signed me to a recording contract, and I began selecting material for his eponymous debut album. Not yet fully confident in my own songwriting abilities, I cut only two original numbers, rounding out the collection with traditional folk tunes and songs by blues singers like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Bukka White. This time for me was incredible. I am finally becoming what I have had always wanted to be. It's the most incredible feeling. July 1966 Its been a long time since I have written in this journal. Mainly because in the last five years I have been very busy. Today I decided to write because I had a very bad day. I was involved in a very bad motorcycle accident so I have finally had the time to discuss what has happened to me in the past couple of years. I have been performing for many years but at a folk festival early last year I was booded for the first time off stage. I played at the Newport Folk festival and I played an acoustic guitar and the people didn't like that very much. It was very disappointing. I worked very hard on this last album which I played half acoustic and half electric. This latest album was called Bringing it all back home. (http://www.medialab.chalmers.se/guitar/LC3.html) (http:// www.dicographynet.com/dylan) The 1963 release of The Freewheelin' I marked my emergence as one of the most original and poetic voices in the history of American popular music. The album included two of the most memorable 1960s folk songs, "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." My next album, The Times They Are A-Changin', firmly established me as the definitive songwriter of the protest movement that is going on right now, a reputation that only increased after I became involved with one of the movement's established icons, Joan Baez, in 1963. While my romantic relationship with Baez lasted only two years, it benefited both a lot in terms
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Approximate Word count = 3251
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)
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