20 Rare Photos of Teenage Bob Dylan in the 1950s

Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in St. Mary’s Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota. Dylan’s paternal grandparents, Anna Kirghiz and Zigman Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States, following the 1905 pogroms against Jews. His maternal grandparents, Florence and Ben Stone, were Lithuanian Jews who had arrived in the US in 1902. Dylan wrote that his paternal grandmother’s family was originally from the Kağızman District of Kars Province, northeastern Turkey.

In the early 1950s, Dylan listened to the Grand Ole Opry radio show and heard the songs of Hank Williams. He later wrote: “The sound of his voice went through me like an electric rod.” Dylan was also impressed by the delivery of Johnnie Ray: “He was the first singer whose voice and style, I guess, I totally fell in love with.... I loved his style, wanted to dress like him too.” As a teenager, Dylan heard rock and roll on radio stations broadcasting from Shreveport and Little Rock.

Dylan formed several bands while attending Hibbing High School. In the Golden Chords, he performed covers of songs by Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Their performance of Danny & the Juniors’ “Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay” at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone. On January 31, 1959, 17-year-old Dylan saw Buddy Holly perform at the Duluth Armory, four days before Holly’s fatal plane crash. Dylan was electrified and in his Nobel Prize lecture he explained: “Buddy wrote songs – songs that had beautiful melodies and imaginative verses. And he sang great – sang in more than a few voices. He was the archetype. Everything I wasn’t and wanted to be.”

In 1959, Dylan’s high school yearbook carried the caption “Robert Zimmerman: to join ’Little Richard’.” That year, as Elston Gunnn, he performed twice with Bobby Vee, playing piano and clapping. In September 1959, Dylan enrolled at the University of Minnesota. Living at the Jewish-centric fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu house, Dylan began to perform at the Ten O’Clock Scholar, a coffeehouse near campus, and became involved in the Dinkytown folk music circuit. His focus on rock and roll gave way to American folk music, as he explained in a 1985 interview:

“The thing about rock'n'roll is that for me anyway it wasn't enough.... There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms ... but the songs weren't serious or didn't reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.”

During this period, he began to introduce himself as “Bob Dylan.” In his memoir, he wrote that he considered adopting the surname Dillon before unexpectedly seeing poems by Dylan Thomas, and deciding upon the given name spelling. In a 2004 interview, he said, “You’re born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”