Aired on Treasure Island Oldies – February 02, 2025
On April 12, 1963, twenty-one year old Bob Zimmerman played his first major concert at New York City’s Town Hall.
Four years prior to that, on January 31, 1959, Zimmerman, a native Minnesotan, attended a concert at the Duluth Armory featuring a performer who would go on to be recognized as one of the pioneers of Rock & Roll despite the fact that he would die in a plane crash just three days later. That performer was Buddy Holly.
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The impact Holly had on Zimmerman was a profound one.
Zimmerman, a singer/songwriter himself, would soon relocate in New York City where he had the good fortune to hook up with the likes of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Joan Baez – all became influential figures in his life and his music. Complementing this was his “pen pal” relationship with Johnny Cash.
His songs often reflected the topical and political themes of the time, and he became a leader of the protest song movement, defying pop music conventions and appealing to an evolving counterculture.
Inspired by the works of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and jazz performer David Allyn, he legally changed his name to Bob Dylan on August 2, 1962.
In October 2016, fifty-seven years after his Buddy Holly experience, Dylan wrote the following in his Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech:
Holly “looked me right straight dead in the eye, and he transmitted something.”
That “something” was sure prevalent at Dylan’s April 12, 1963 Town Hall concert where he proclaimed that the answer is “Blowin’ In The Wind,” this week’s Tom Locke moment in time.
YouTube listing of the song:
This “Moments In Time” story is yet another example of a “golden oldie” or forgotten favorite that earned its place in the evolution of Rock & Roll.