Little Bobby Zimmerman makes it big in NYC

April 11th, 1961, Bob Dylan performs in NYC for the first time.

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman May 24, 1941, Duluth, Minnesota, USA) grew up in Hibbing, Mn, listening to the radio, at first the powerful blues and country music stations beamed all the way from New Orleans, and later early rock and roll. He formed his first band, The Golden Chords, while still at high school. Around this time, Zimmerman chose the pseudonym Elston Gunn for himself, playing a few concerts as Bobby Vee's pianist under this name. He began playing the local folk circuit in Minneapolis while attending college in '59 and began using the name Bob Dylan (I'm not even getting into the arguments about where he got "Dylan" from, Bobby doesn't even agree with himself from interview to interview). He quit formal studies in early 1961, eventually drifting to New York City to perform and to visit his ailing idol Woody Guthrie. Playing in small clubs for next to no pay, he soon gained some recognition after a review in the New York Times (September 29, 1961) by critic Robert Shelton, which led to John Hammond, a legendary music talent scout, signing him to Columbia Records.

While a fine interpreter of songs, Dylan was not widely considered a beautiful singer, and many of his songs first reached the public through versions by other artists. Joan Baez, a friend and sometime lover, took it upon herself to record a great deal of his early material, as did many others including The Byrds, Sonny and Cher, The Hollies, Manfred Mann and Herman's Hermits. So ubiquitous were these covers by the mid-1960s that CBS started to promote him with the tag: "Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan". Whoever sang his songs, they were immediately recognizable as his and a good part of his fame rested not only on his lyrical excellence but on the underlying attitude: a sort of po' boy adrift in the wide world posture that gradually changed to hipster arbiter of all things cool and uncool.

By 1963, Dylan was becoming increasingly prominent in the civil rights movement, singing at rallies including the March on Washington in which Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech. Dylan's next album, The Times They Are A-Changin', reflected a more sophisticated, politicised and cynical Dylan. The bleak material, concerned with such subjects as the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers and the despair engendered by the breakdown of farming and mining communities ("Ballad of Hollis Brown","North Country Blues"), was lightened by a single anti-love song, "Boots of Spanish Leather"."The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", a highlight of the album, describes a young aristocrat's killing of a maid. Never explicitly mentioning race, the song leaves no doubt that the killer is white, the victim black.

Dylan continued to grow on his subsequent albums: Another Side Of Bob Dylan's surreal "Motorpsycho Nightmare," the breakup song "I Don't Believe You," and "My Back Pages", which belittled the simplicity & overly seriousness of his earlier work; and then came Bringing It All Back Home with "Subterranean Homesick Blues" going Rock & Roll... And then Dylan Went Electric. Possibly he went electric to expand his musical horizons, possibly he did just to piss off the "Fans" that were hounding him to sound like his first 3 albums, it's probably a little of both.

Through '65 & '66 Dylan's Amphedamine & Alcohol fueled output included some of his best work: Highway 61 Revisited celebrated the highway that runs from Mn. to New Orleans, passing through the Mississippi Delta on the way, with it's bluesy backbeats & amplification; Blonde on Blonde saw him recording with The Hawks (later The Band) & showing the influence his buddies the Beatles were having on him with "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again " & "Visions of Johanna"; Dylan fought with his band, his audiences & his demons until the brakes locked up on his Triumph 500 locked & put the brakes on his recording & touring for a while.

While convelescing in Woodstock, NY, in his house up the road from the Band's "Big Pink" house he was able to slow down & think and released John Wesley Harding with it's spare arrangements & the great song "All Along The Watchtower", later immortalised by Jimi Hendrix. And then he decided to piss off his Folkie fans again & released Nashville Skyline (although "Lay Lady Lay" was a hit single) with it's straight Country sound & Johnny Cash duet; Self Portrait (reviewed as "What is this shit?" by Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone magazine writer and one of Dylan's buddies), New Morning's mostly instrumental soundtrack outtakes from the movie Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (but included "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", one of his most-covered songs); And Planet Waves documenting his estrangement from his then wife Sara Lowndes (i.e., "Dirge":"I hate myself for loving you and the weakness that it showed / You were just a painted face on a trip down suicide road.");Blood on the Tracks then documenting the marriage's dissolution & collapse; And the Dylan was Born Again.

1978's Street Legalhad a lousy sound mix & some seriously insrutable lyrics (("Well, the last thing I remember before I stripped and kneeled / Was that trainload of fools bogged down in a magnetic field / A gypsy with a broken flag and a flashing ring / Said, 'Son, this ain't a dream no more, it's the real thing'"); Slow Train Coming, Saved & *Shot of Love * documented his new-found Chrisianity, his marriage to back up singer Carolyn Dennis, & the birth of their daughter Desiree Dennis Dylan; and Dylan got Boring.

His '80's work mostly fluctuated from the adequate (1983's Infidels) to the dreadful (1988's Down in the Groove); He took time out from this pablum to work with the Traveling Wilburys (Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and his good friend George Harrison) to write some nice, light hearted pop-based fare; he also starred in the turdorama movie Hearts of Fire.

In the '90s he released the kids album Under the Red Sky & returned to his Folk roots with Good As I Been To You World Gone Wrong;He gave a masterful concert for MTV UnPlugged; and then he almost died from a life-threatening heart infection, pericarditis, brought on by histoplasmosis contracted by contact with dessicated airborne chicken dung (he is a recreational chicken farmer!?!).

In 1997 he released Time Out of Mind, his first collection of original songs in seven years, and returned to actually writing consistently good records;He won a Grammy for Time out of Mind & an Oscar for the song Things Have Changed"; the album Love and Theft, released on September 11, 2001, is some of his best work since the early '70s.

When not raising Chickens on his farm, Dylan tours nearly 100 days a year, rewriting his ouveur nearly nightly with new arrangements, changing band memberships & experimenting with new vocal stylings.

Other Historical Highlights for Today are:

• 1240 - Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Gwynedd, died
• 1803 - French Foreign Minister Charles Talleyrand offers to sell all of the Louisiana Territory to the United States
• 1876 - The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks is organized
• 1889 - Nick LaRocca, jazz musician, founding member of The Original Dixieland Jazz Band & self proclaimed creator of Jazz, is Born (d. 1961)
• 1906 - Dale Messick, cartoonist, creator of Brenda Starr, is Born(d. 2005)
• 1906 - James Anthony Bailey, co-founder with PT Barnum of the circus that evolved into Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, died (b. 1847)
• 1926 - Luther Burbank, botanist, died (b. 1849)
• 1930 - Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, is Born (d. 1997)
• 1932 - Joel Grey, singer, actor, father of Erin Grey, is Born
• 1947 - Jackie Robinson is the first African American to play in a modern-day Major League Baseball game
• 1970 - Apollo 13 is launched
• 2001 - Harry Secombe, actor, comedian, member of The Goon Show, died (b. 1921)