50 facts about Bob Dylan: he has been influential in popular music and culture for more than five decades

Dylan won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for the song "Gotta Serve Somebody". Learn 50 facts about Bob Dylan.

1. He has been influential in popular music and culture for more than five decades.

2. Early songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" became anthems for the American civil rights and anti-war movements.

3. Leaving his initial base in the American folk music revival, Dylan's six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" altered the range of popular music in 1965.

4. His mid-1960s recordings, backed by rock musicians, reached the top end of the United States music charts while also attracting denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.

5. Dylan's lyrics have incorporated various political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture.

6. Initially inspired by the performances of Little Richard, and the songwriting of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson and Hank Williams, Dylan has amplified and personalized musical genres.

7. His recording career, spanning 50 years, has explored the traditions in American song-from folk, blues, and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and the Great American Songbook.

8. Dylan performs with guitar, keyboards, and harmonica.

9. Backed by a changing line-up of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour.

10. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but his greatest contribution is considered his songwriting.

11. Since 1994, Dylan has published six books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries.

12. As a musician, Dylan has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time.

13. He has received numerous awards including Grammy, Golden Globe, and Academy Award.

14. He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Minnesota Music Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame.

15. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

16. In May 2012, Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

17. Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota.

18. He has one younger brother named David.

19. Dylan's paternal grandparents Zigman and Anna Zimmerman emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States following anti-Semitic pogroms of 1905.

20. His maternal grandparents Ben and Florence Stone were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in the U.S. in 1902.

21. In his autobiography Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan writes that his paternal grandmother's maiden name was Kirghiz and her family originated from Kağızman district of Kars Province in north-eastern Turkey.

22. Dylan's parents Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice "Beatty" Stone were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community.

23. Robert Zimmerman spent his early years listening to the radio-first to blues and country stations from Shreveport, Louisiana, and, as a teen, to rock and roll. Zimmerman formed several bands while attending Hibbing High School.

24. In 1959, his high school yearbook carried the caption: "Robert Zimmerman: to join 'Little Richard'."

25. In January 1961, he traveled to New York City, to perform there and visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie, who was seriously ill with Huntington's disease in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. Guthrie had been a revelation to Dylan and influenced his early performances. Describing Guthrie's impact, he wrote: "The songs themselves had the infinite sweep of humanity in them... [He] was the true voice of the American spirit. I said to myself I was going to be Guthrie's greatest disciple."

26. As well as visiting Guthrie in hospital, Dylan befriended Guthrie's acolyte Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Much of Guthrie's repertoire was channeled through Elliott, and Dylan paid tribute to Elliott in Chronicles: Volume One.

27. From February 1961, Dylan played at clubs around Greenwich Village. He befriended and picked up material from folk singers there, including Dave Van Ronk, Fred Neil, Odetta, the New Lost City Ramblers, and Irish musicians the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.

28. While working for Columbia, Dylan recorded under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt, for Broadside, a folk magazine and record label.

29. Dylan used the pseudonym Bob Landy to record as a piano player on The Blues Project, a 1964 anthology album by Elektra Records.

30. As Tedham Porterhouse, Dylan played harmonica on Ramblin' Jack Elliott's 1964 album, Jack Elliott.

31. On July 29, 1966, Dylan crashed his 500cc Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle near his home in Woodstock, New York and was thrown to the ground. Though the extent of his injuries was never disclosed, Dylan said that he broke several vertebrae in his neck.

32. Mystery still surrounds the circumstances of the accident since no ambulance was called to the scene and Dylan was not hospitalized. Dylan's biographers have written that the crash offered Dylan the chance to escape the pressures around him. Dylan confirmed this interpretation in his autobiography: "I had been in a motorcycle accident and I'd been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race."

33. Dylan withdrew from public and, apart from a few appearances, did not tour again for almost eight years.

34. Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began to edit D. A. Pennebaker's film of his 1966 tour.

35. In the late 1970s, Dylan became a born again Christian and released two albums of contemporary gospel music.

36. Slow Train Coming (1979) featured the guitar accompaniment of Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits) and was produced by veteran R&B producer Jerry Wexler.

37. Dylan won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for the song "Gotta Serve Somebody".

38. When touring in late 1979 and early 1980, Dylan would not play his older, secular works, and he delivered declarations of his faith from the stage, such as:

39. Years ago they ... said I was a prophet. I used to say, "No I'm not a prophet" they say "Yes you are, you're a prophet." I said, "No it's not me." They used to say "You sure are a prophet." They used to convince me I was a prophet. Now I come out and say Jesus Christ is the answer. They say, "Bob Dylan's no prophet." They just can't handle it.

40. Random House had published Drawn Blank (1994), a book of Dylan's drawings, The Drawn Blank Series opened in October 2007 at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany.

41. The exhibition coincided with the publication of the book Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series, which includes 170 reproductions from the series.

42. From September 2010 until April 2011, the National Gallery of Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan, The Brazil Series.

43. In July 2011, a leading contemporary art gallery, Gagosian Gallery, announced their representation of Dylan's paintings.

44. In August 2013, Britain's National Portrait Gallery in London hosted Dylan's first major UK exhibition, Face Value, featuring twelve pastel portraits.

45. Since 1994, Dylan has published six books of painting and drawing.

46. Dylan married Sara Lownds on November 22, 1965.

47. Their first child, Jesse Byron Dylan, was born on January 6, 1966, and they had three more children: Anna Lea, Samuel Isaac Abram, and Jakob Luke.

48. Dylan also adopted Sara's daughter from a prior marriage, Maria Lownds.

49. Bob and Sara Dylan were divorced on June 29, 1977.

50. Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, Dylan's daughter with his backup singer Carolyn Dennis (often professionally known as Carol Dennis) was born on January 31, 1986. Dylan married Carolyn Dennis on June 4, 1986. The couple divorced in October 1992. Their marriage and child remained a closely guarded secret until the publication of Howard Sounes' Dylan biography, Down the Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan in 2001.

 Source: Wikipedia.org