Probably the most well-known determine in popular culture to ever attend the College of Minnesota, Bob Dylan, enrolled on the Faculty of Science, Literature and Arts within the fall of 1959.
After shifting away from his hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, Dylan lived in Minneapolis for a few 12 months earlier than he would kick begin his legendary music profession by shifting to New York Metropolis in January of 1961.
Whereas Dylan’s arrival in New York signified the beginning of a momentous musical profession, it’s value noting Minneapolis was the place Dylan began to carry out below his now-famous stage title, Bob Dylan, as a substitute of his beginning title, Robert Zimmerman.
Dylan started to carry out at Twin Cities espresso outlets and honed his craft as a songwriter and performer when he relocated to Minneapolis and located musical inspiration.
In his 2004 memoir “Chronicles: Quantity One,” Dylan cited areas he carried out at: “I used to be making three to 5 {dollars} each time I performed at both one of many coffeehouses round or one other place over in St. Paul known as the Purple Onion pizza parlor.”
In a 1966 article by Playboy, it was additionally documented that “he started singing and enjoying the guitar and harmonica at Minneapolis’ Ten O’Clock Scholar for 2 {dollars} an evening; it’s stated that when he requested for a increase to 5 {dollars}, he was fired.”
Many years later, Dylan would go on to promote over 100 million albums worldwide and in 2016 received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
To at the present time, Dylan’s time on the College remains to be considerably shrouded in thriller and rumor, as his life was not extensively documented by journalists till after he made his transfer to New York Metropolis.
One supply from 1966, a journalist who interviewed Dylan for Playboy, wrote, “younger Zimmerman did handle to complete highschool, and went on to spend about six months on the College of Minnesota in 1960.”
Nevertheless, one other supply, cited by the Star Tribune in 2007, stated they confirmed with the College, “Robert Zimmerman was registered for 4 quarters — fall of ‘59 by way of fall of ‘60 — and declared music as his main.”
Amidst these conflicting reviews, all that’s identified for sure is that Dylan attended the College from 1959 to 1960, as confirmed on an archived College web site, which means Dylan dropped out someday in 1960, earlier than his transfer to New York Metropolis.
Dylan himself finally supplied some particulars of his time on the College in his 2004 memoir.
Dylan lived in a Dinkytown residence throughout his time as a College scholar in a constructing that, on the time, housed Grey’s Campus Drug and would later be occupied by Loring Pasta Bar and just lately Grey’s Restaurant.
Dylan detailed his less-than-glamorous residence in his memoir: “The room above Grey’s drugstore value thirty bucks a month. It was an okay place and I might simply afford it.”
“Above Grey’s, the crash pad was not more than an empty storage room with a sink and a window trying into an alley. No closet or something. Bathroom down the corridor. I put a mattress on the ground, purchased a used dresser, plugged in a scorching plate on high of that — used the skin window ledge as a fridge when it obtained chilly,” Dylan wrote.
One facet of Dylan the school scholar which may shock some is that he was a member of a fraternity, Sigma Alpha Mu (whose constructing is now housed by the Alpha Chi Omega sorority).
“I’d come into Minneapolis unnoticed, I rode in on a Greyhound bus,” Dylan wrote in his memoir. “My mom had given me an deal with for a fraternity home on College Avenue. My cousin Chucky, whom I simply barely knew, had been the fraternity president.”
Dylan went on to explain his environment in Dinkytown on the flip of the Nineteen Sixties decade in his memoir.
“The world across the college was often called Dinkytown, which was type of like slightly Village, untypical from the remainder of typical Minneapolis. It was largely full of Victorian homes that had been getting used as scholar flats,” Dylan wrote.
Whereas close to the College, Dylan managed to search out musical inspiration.
“I discovered the native document retailer within the coronary heart of Dinkytown. What I used to be on the lookout for had been people music data and the primary one I noticed was Odetta on the Custom label. I went into the listening sales space to listen to it. Odetta was nice. I had by no means heard of her till then. She was a deep singer, highly effective strumming and a hammering-on model of enjoying. I discovered nearly each tune off the document proper then and there, even borrowing the hammering-on model,” Dylan wrote.
Miraculously, a recording of Dylan’s throughout his espresso home performing days has survived all these many years later.
A stay recording of Dylan from 1960, whereas he was enrolled on the College, often called the “Minnesota Social gathering Tape” was donated to the Minnesota Historic Society archives in 2005. In response to the Star Tribune, the tape, that includes a 19-year-old Dylan performing cowl songs, was recorded in Dinkytown.
Whereas not essentially probably the most monumental or well-documented period of Dylan’s profession, his brief time as a school scholar is a bit of the College’s historical past.