This document provides background information on Bob Dylan's origins, including his birth name Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota. It discusses his early influences like Woody Guthrie and the folk music he discovered. It outlines Dylan's journey from Minnesota to Greenwich Village in New York City where he immersed himself in the folk music scene in the early 1960s and released his first album with original songs and covers of folk classics.

1. ORIGINS:
THE “NORTH COUNTRY,”
“NEW YORK TOWN,”
AND THE
FOLK REVIVAL

2. HOMEWORK;
ENROLLMENT

3. TALL TALES
[Some lies to interviewers about his origins]

4. THE “CHIEF COMMANDER”
[VIDEO: On 60 Minutes, Dylan describes his
career as motivated by a “bargain” he made
with “the, uh, chief commander,” in “this
world as well as the world we can’t see.”]

5. THE “CROSSROADS”
[VIDEO: In an interview, Bob Dylan
recalls “goin’ down to the
crossroads and makin’ that deal,
you know, whoosh!”]

6. MINNESOTA,
THE “NORTH COUNTRY”
★ Duluth
★ Hibbing
★ Dinkytown

7. BOY FROM THE
NORTH COUNTRY:
ROBERT
ALLEN
ZIMMERMAN

8. THE TALENT SHOW

9. DINKYTOWN, MN

10. THE ANTHOLOGY OF
AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC
★ Dock Boggs,
“Country Blues” -
a taste of the old,
weird America

11. WOODY GUTHRIE
★ Bound For Glory
★ The Dust Bowl
★ “Song To Woody”

12. “NEW YORK TOWN”
★ Guthrie’s Text
deathbed
★ Greenwich Village, 1961
★ First album deal

13. GREENWICH VILLAGE
FOLK SCENE
★ Dave Van Ronk
★ Joan Baez
★ Robert Shelton

14. BOB DYLAN (1962)
★ Two original songs:
★ “Talkin’ New York”
★ “Song to Woody”
★ 11 covers

15. “FIXIN’ TO DIE”
(lyrics by Bukka White)

16. I’m out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin’ a road other men have gone down
I’m seein’ your world of people and things
“SONG TO
WOODY”
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings
Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
’Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along
Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an’ it’s torn
It looks like it’s a-dyin’ an’ it’s hardly been born
Hey, Woody Guthrie, but I know that you know
All the things that I’m a-sayin’ an’ a-many times more
I’m a-singin’ you the song, but I can’t sing enough
’Cause there’s not many men that done the things
that you’ve done
Here’s to Cisco an’ Sonny an’ Leadbelly too
An’ to all the good people that traveled with you
Here’s to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind
I’m a-leavin’ tomorrow, but I could leave today
Somewhere down the road someday
The very last thing that I’d want to do
Is to say I’ve been hittin’ some hard travelin’ too

17. “YOU’RE INVISIBLE NOW, YOU
GOT NO SECRETS TO CONCEAL”
★ The “Dylanologists”
★ Robert Shelton
★ B. J. Rolfzen and
Hibbing High
School

18. NEXT WEEK:
Now that we
know who he is,
where he’s
from...
What is Bob
Dylan doing at
the March on
Washington?