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Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman) was born in St. Mary's Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, and raised in Hibbing Minnesota. He grew up listening to country, blues, and rock and roll on the radio. While attending Hibbing High School, Dylan formed multiple bands, often performing covers of popular songs.
https://www.biography.com/musician/bob-dylan

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In September 1959, Dylan moved to Minneapolis and enrolled in the University of Minnesota. Dylan booked gigs at the Ten O’Clock Scholar, a nearby coffee shop and joined the Dinkytown Folk Music Circuit. Dylan began introducing himself as “Bob Dylan” during this time

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On May 27, 1963, Dylan released his second studio album, Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan which included hits like Blowin’ in the Wind. The album reached number 22 in the US and eventually went platinum. He wrote mainly about the Civil Rights Movement and nuclear warfare.

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On August 28th 1963 Bob Dylan released the album The Times They Are a-Changin’ which was largely a protest album. It contained many songs about the civil rights movement such as  “Only a Pawn in Their Game” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.”  The album also had songs about the breakdown of mining and farming communities such as “Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “North Country Blues.”

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In the summer of 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan used a Stratocaster, an electric guitar, on set. This resulted in the crowd booing him off the stage. Bob Dylan was an icon of folk music so the switch from acoustic to electric along with poor sound quality produced a negative response. Although Dylan continued to create music with the electric guitar and soon launch a new amplified single.

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In 1975, Dylan launched the album Blood on the Tracks based on his rocky marriage with his then wife, Sara. Although, Dylan refuses that the album was autobiographical. It received mixed feedback but is now considered one of his greatest works. The album reached the number one spot on Billboard's Top 200. It was the last of his folk tradition works.

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Dylan converted from Judaism to Christianity in a matter of a few months. He based a large amount of his music in the late 70s on gospel music and scripture. He created three evangelical albums, Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love. Dylan lost a significant portion of his fanbase and eventually returned to his original music in the 80s.

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Bob Dylan released his 30th studio album, “Time Out of Mind”, in September 1997. This milestone showcased the long history of success in and a rejuvenation of Dylan’s career

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In May 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Dylan the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award possible. Obama stated, “there is not a bigger giant in the history of American music.”

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In 2016, Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature. Dylan was lauded for filling the tradition of song with meaningful poetry. The lyrics and causes Dylan sang for earned high praise.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2016/dylan/biographical/#:~:text=Bob%20Dylan%20was%20born%20in,New%20York%20City%20in%201961.

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B ob Dylan was born on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. He grew up in the city of Hibbing. As a teenager, he played in various bands and with time his interest in music deepened, with a particular passion for American folk music and blues. One of his idols was the folk singer Woody Guthrie. He was also influenced by the early authors of the Beat Generation, as well as by modernist poets.

Dylan moved to New York City in 1961 and began to perform in clubs and cafés in Greenwich Village. He met the record producer John Hammond, with whom he signed a contract for his debut album, Bob Dylan (1962). In the following years, he recorded a number of albums which have had a tremendous impact on popular music: Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited in 1965, Blonde On Blonde in 1966 and Blood On The Tracks in 1975. His productivity continued in the following decades, resulting in masterpieces like Oh Mercy (1989), Time Out of Mind (1997) and Modern Times (2006).

Dylan's tours in 1965 and 1966 attracted a lot of attention. For a period, he was accompanied by film maker D. A. Pennebaker, who documented life around the stage in what would come to be the movie Dont Look Back (1967). Dylan has recorded a large number of albums revolving around topics such as: the social conditions of man, religion, politics and love. The lyrics have continuously been published in new editions starting in 1973, under the title Writings and Drawings, subsequently changed to Lyrics. As an artist, he is strikingly versatile; he has been active as a painter, actor and scriptwriter.

Besides his large production of albums, Dylan has published experimental work like the prose poetry collection Tarantula (1971). He has written an autobiography, Chronicles (2004), which depicts memories from the early years in New York and which provides glimpses of his life at the center of popular culture. Since the late 1980s, Bob Dylan has toured consistently, playing over 3000 concerts during the last 20 years. Dylan has the status of an icon. His influence on contemporary culture is profound, and he is the object of a steady stream of literary and musical analysis.

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/ Nobel Lectures/The Nobel Prizes. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate.

To cite this section
MLA style: Bob Dylan - Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022. Tue. 20 Dec 2022. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2016/dylan/biographical/>

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B ob Dylan was born on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. He grew up in the city of Hibbing. As a teenager, he played in various bands and with time his interest in music deepened, with a particular passion for American folk music and blues.

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https://www.biography.com/musician/bob-dylan

https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/bob-dylan-electric-1965/

https://www.vulture.com/2016/10/bob-dylan-award-history-nobel.html

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2016/dylan/biographical/#:~:text=Bob%20Dylan%20was%20born%20in,New%20York%20City%20in%201961.