Bob Dylan

Born in Duluth, Minnesota, on May 24, 1941, Bob Dylan moved to New York City in January, 1961, where he became part of the burgeoning folk music scene in Greenwich Village. Heavily influenced at first by folk singer Woody Guthrie as well as by blues singers such as Mississippi’s Big Joe Williams, Mr. Dylan quickly began to transmute his influences into a style of his own. During this period, he wrote some of the best known songs of the early 1960's – among them “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “With God on Our Side,” and “Masters of War.”

As the 1960’s went on, Mr. Dylan began shifting his focus from overtly topical material to a more personal, poetic approach, and found strong inspiration in the possibilities of rock and roll as a form. In songs such as “Desolation Row,” “Tombstone Blues,” and especially the hit single “Like a Rolling Stone,” he found a way of combining mordant Beat-influenced poetry, surrealism, balladic folk forms, blues, and rock into a montage, by turns funny, exhilarating, and frightening, of a society in turmoil.

In 1966, a motorcycle accident forced a hiatus in his frenetic touring schedule. During this period, he recorded the informal tracks that came to be known as the “Basement Tapes,” a kind of kaleidoscope of all the influences that had gone into his music until then.

He returned to live performing in 1974 with The Band, and since then has continued to record and tour extensively. Touring highlights include 1975’s Rolling Thunder Review, and stints with the Grateful Dead, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. He has recorded over 40 albums, including well-known works such as Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, Nashville Skyline, Blood on the Tracks and Oh Mercy. His album, Time Out of Mind, has been called “alchemic magic” by Time magazine. Among his other well-known songs are “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Don’t Think Twice,” “It’s All Right,” “It Ain’t Me Babe,” “Just Like a Woman,” “Lay Lady Lay,” “Forever Young,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Gotta Serve Somebody,” “Jokerman,” and “Dignity.”

In 2008, the Pulitzer Prize jury awarded him a special citation for for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power” and in 2012 Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.