Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, and started out as a folk singer in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. He took cues from Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, but his own writing quickly became something else entirely. Songs like 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' and 'Desolation Row' showed how he could stretch folk music into something more literary and surreal.

His 1965 performance at the Newport Folk Festival, where he played with an electric band, was a real turning point. It upset some of his folk purist fans, but it also opened up his sound. Around that time he made albums like 'Bringing It All Back Home' and 'Highway 61 Revisited,' which included 'All Along The Watchtower.' He worked with a loose group of musicians who would later become The Band, including Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm.

Dylan kept writing and recording at a steady clip, shifting styles when he felt like it. Later songs like 'Gotta Serve Somebody' and 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' have been covered by all sorts of artists. He's put out dozens of albums, but the work from that mid-60s period, when he was blending folk, rock, and poetry, is what people still talk about.