Bob Dylan is unquestionably the most important songwriter of the twentieth century. An artist of uncompromising originality, his work has exerted an artistic and intellectual influence that goes far beyond the world of popular entertainment.
Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on 24 May 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, USA. He spent his childhood in Hibbing, a Minnesotan mining town on the shores of Lake Superior. Dylan later remarked of it: “There was really nothing there”. Listening avidly to radio music transmitted from New Orleans and playing in numerous local bands, the teenage Dylan familiarized himself with the country, blues and rock‘n’roll styles that would inflect his own compositions from the 1960s to the present-…
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Citation: Marggraf Turley, Richard. "Bob Dylan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 June 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1373, accessed 25 November 2024.]