On May 24, 1941, Robert Allen Zimmerman was born in Duluth, Minnesota (he celebrates his 76th birthday this week). His parents—owners of a small appliance repair-shop—were children of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia. He was only six when his father contracted polio, an event that forced the family to return to his mother’s nearby hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota.
Growing up in Hibbing, he developed a passionate interest in music. He took up the guitar at age 14, joined a local rock and roll band, and began performing the songs of Little Richard and Elvis Presley. After graduating from high school in 1959, he briefly attended the University of Minnesota, where he was inspired by the music of Woody Guthrie to give up rock and roll for the emerging trend of "folk music."
After one year of college, he adopted a new—and now legendary—stage name, moved to Manhattan, and began performing in Greenwich Village nightclubs. After his first album in 1962, which was only a modest success, he catapulted to fame with a second album of so-called "protest songs" in 1963. His songs contained simple melodies, haunting lyrics, and vivid metaphorical images that broke new ground in American music. Many became anthems for a new generation.
In his career, he has received every award possible for a creative artist, including the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, which hailed him "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." Never one to be impressed with honors, it took him a while to actually accept the award. In his life, he seems to have remained true to a definition of success he offered in a 1967 interview:
"A man is a success
if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night,
and in between does what he wants to do."
