Postcard Thursday: Bob Dylan's Birthday

Happy 77th Birthday to Nobel laureate Bob Dylan, who was born May 24, 1941, in Duluth Minnesota. His birth name was Robert Zimmerman, and, as we write in Footprints in New York:

he grew up in the tight-knit Jewish community in Hibbing, his mother’s hometown. After graduating high school in 1959, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota but only lasted one year. While he was there, he tapped into the burgeoning folk scene and began consistently using the stage name Bob Dylan. Having been a rock and roller, Dylan’s musical trajectory changed around this time when he was introduced to the music of Woody Guthrie, which, in Dylan’s words, “made my head spin.” 

In January 1961, he arrived in New York City determined to do two things: perform in Greenwich Village, the center of America’s folk music revival, and meet Woody Guthrie. By the end of his first week, he’d done both. Dylan probably got to the city January 23, the day the front page of the New York Times proclaimed it the “coldest winter in seventeen years,” a line Dylan would borrow for one of his earliest compositions, “Talkin’ New York.” In No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Dylan’s early career, the singer remembers that first day: “I took the subway down to the Village. I went to the Cafe Wha?, I looked out at the crowd, and I most likely asked from the stage ‘Does anybody know where a couple of people could stay tonight?’” 

Singer-songwriter Fred Neil presided over the bar’s eclectic all-day lineup. Dylan showed his chops by backing up Neil and singer Karen Dalton on the harmonica and was hired to “blow my lungs out for a dollar a day.” 

Immersing himself in the music scene, Dylan soaked up everything he heard, from live acts in the bars and coffee houses south of Washington Square to the records he’d spin at Izzy Young’s Folklore Center down the street from Cafe Wha?. In the meantime he continued to embellish his back story. In No Direction Home, Izzy Young recalls Dylan telling him, “I was born in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1941, moved to Gallup, New Mexico; then until now lived in Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas, North Dakota (for a little bit). Started playing in carnivals when I was fourteen, with guitar and piano. . . .” 

Later, newspapers picked up the fake biography, writing about the cowboy singer from Gallup. Stretching all the way back to the city’s Dutch pioneers, people have come to New York to reinvent themselves, to cast off their old identities and strike out in new directions. Dylan’s fanciful back story may have been an extreme case, but it was effective.

Today, Dylan's career shows no sign of slowing down. In 2016, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the first musician to be given the honor. In 2017, he released Triplicate, a triple album of standards, many of which had been recorded by Frank Sinatra. And he continues to tour regularly, with a swing through Asia, Australia, and New Zealand coming up this summer.

This summer we'll conduct a tour of Bob Dylan's New York -- watch this blog for details.

In other news, our blog recently had its millionth visitor. Thank you all so much for your support!

* * * * Read more about NYC history in   Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show

"It was twenty years ago today...." Well, actually, it was 46 years ago today, and it was one of the most talked about moments in television history: the Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show.

The group's first British albums, Please Please Me and With the Beatles had been released in rapid succession in 1963, keeping the group at the top of the British charts for a remarkable 51 straight weeks. In America, it had taken a few months for Beatlemania to catch fire, but once it did in early 1964, the group became an unstoppable force. When they landed at JFK on February 7, 1964, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had just reached the top of the Billboard charts and a crowd of 3,000 screaming fans greeted them. (The fact that 3,000 was considered a crowd seems almost quaint.)

Two days later, on February 9, the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. Like Elvis's appearance before them, it was a crucial moment in introducing the band to a larger audience and a record 73 million people tuned in to watch them perform "All My Loving," "Till There Was You," "She Loves You," "I Saw Her Standing There," and "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

[73 million people equaled about 40% of the TV audience that night. We've often wondered: what were the others watching? Well, thanks to the obsessive folks at tvtango.com, we found out it was The Wonderful World of Disney, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (starring a 12-year-old Kurt Russell), Imogene Coca in Grindl, and Arrest and Trial, the forerunner to Law & Order.]

On February 11, the band played its first U.S. concert at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C., then returned to New York for two shows at Carnegie Hall. (The shows ran a mere 35 minutes each!) The group appeared for a second time on Ed Sullivan on February 16, playing live via satellite from a hotel in Miami where they had retreated for a little r&r. Though they were only in the States for less three weeks, the trip had a lasting impact, unleashing the "British Invasion" and forever changing the face of pop music.

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Interested in more Rock and Roll history? Take our NYC Rock and Roll audio tour -- hosted by famed DJ Ken Dashow -- and produced by our partners at CityListen.com

Read more about New York in the 1960s in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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Elvis in New York: The Early Years

Friday marks what would have been the 75th birthday of the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, who was born January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi.

Though most associated with Memphis -- where Elvis and family moved when he was 13, where he cut his first, influential Sun Records tracks, and where he later lived in the mansion/shrine Graceland -- the King had an important relationship with New York City, especially during the earliest part of his career.

Elvis first came to New York on March 23, 1955 to audition for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, a CBS program that showcased unheralded talent. Though he had already cut his first single, "That's All Right"/"Blue Moon of Kentucky," for Sun, Elvis was virtually unheard of outside the south and was still mainly playing the high school concert circuit. The trip to New York was his first plane ride. Elvis and the other two members of his trio (Scotty Moore and Bill Black) spent the day sightseeing before the audition, which took place at Godfrey's offices at 501 Madison Avenue.

The audition did not go well -- Elvis was nervous and deemed too outlandish for Godfrey's mainstream audience -- and the next night the trio was back on stage in the Marianna, Arkansas, high school auditorium. (The one bright spot of the trip was seeing Bo Diddley, one of Elvis's idols, perform at the Apollo in Harlem.)

Just a few months later, however, Presley returned to the city. Now fully under the management of Colonel Tom Parker and under contract to RCA records, Elvis returned in November 1955 for a round of publicity photos and in January 1956, he was back again to make his first national television appearance on The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show, where he performed "Shake, Rattle & Roll"/"Flip Flop and Fly" and "I Got a Woman."

Elvis in the RCA Studios, July 1956

But perhaps the most important contribution New York made to Elvis's early career were the tracks he cut at the RCA Studios in January, February, and July 1956. On January 30, the King reported to the studios at 155 East 24th Street (now, sadly, demolished) and over the next two days recorded a string of songs that would appear on his debut album, including the hit "Blue Suede Shoes."

In February (after another Dorsey Brothers appearance), Elvis returned to 24th Street to cut "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" and "Shake Rattle & Roll." Then on July 2, he cut one of the biggest singles of his career: "Hound Dog" and "Don't Be Cruel." In the six months since his first national TV appearance, Elvis's popularity had skyrocketed. Moreover, he'd become both confident and meticulous in the studio: "Hound Dog" took 31 takes to perfect and "Don't Be Cruel" was recorded 28 times. (Granted, in the days before overdubs almost all playing was "live" in the studio and the only way to rectify a mistake was to start from the beginning.)

When "Don't Be Cruel"/"Hound Dog" was released it spent 11 weeks at the top of the charts and Elvis was a certified phenomenon. In September he appeared on Ed Sullivan -- his first number famously shot so that the TV audience would not see his swiveling hips -- and the program brought in an 82.9% share of the television audience.

While Presley would return to New York later in his career, most notably for concerts at Madison Square Garden in the 1970s, he never recorded another track here.

Don't Be Cruel - Elvis Presley

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Interested in more Rock and Roll history? Take our NYC Rock and Roll audio tour -- hosted by famed DJ Ken Dashow -- and produced by our partners at CityListen.com

Read more about New York in the 1950s in
Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

To get RSS feeds from this blog, point your reader to this link.
Or, to subscribe via email, follow this link.
Also, you can now follow us on Twitter.