Bob Dylan 1963 NYC

Bob Dylan 1963 NYC, hand-drawn in New York City, striking Woody Guthrie’s classic pose with his 1947 Gibson J-50, age 22.

Robert Allen Zimmerman is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career spanning more than 60 years.

In 1963, Dylan made his breakthrough as a songwriter with the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. The album features “Blowin’ in the Wind” and the thematically complex “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”.

Many songs on the album were labeled protest songs, inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger’s passion for topical songs. “Oxford Town” was an account of James Meredith’s ordeal as the first black student to risk enrollment at the University of Mississippi.
The first song on the album, “Blowin’ in the Wind”, partly derived its melody from the traditional slave song, “No More Auction Block”, while its lyrics questioned the social and political status quo. The song was widely recorded by other artists and became a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary.

Another song, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”, was based on the folk ballad “Lord Randall”. With veiled references to an impending apocalypse, it gained resonance when the Cuban Missile Crisis developed a few weeks after Dylan began performing it.
Like “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” marked a new direction in songwriting, blending a stream-of-consciousness, imagist lyrical attack with traditional folk form.

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