Friday is the 72nd birthday of Robert Allen Zimmerman of Duluth, Minnesota. That name might not ring a bell to most people, for most of his 72 years Robert went by the name Bob Dylan. The 10-time Grammy winning artist and influential song writer released his 35th studio album last year showing that he has yet to slow down, according to CNN.
Many cities around the U.S. will celebrate the birthday of the folk icon with a Dylan Fest or some other similarly named festival. The town of Hibbing, Minnesota goes out of their way to celebrate their most famous son. Although born in Duluth, Dylan spent most of his youth in Hibbing, according to Minnesota Public Radio.
The small town of just over 16,000 people expects an influx of tourists during the town's Dylan Days. Aaron Brown, co-chair of the festival, told Minnesota Public Radio about the event.
"The people get a genuine experience," Brown said. "They experience a Range town exactly as it is, the locals don't put on airs, we don't' do anything different, and what people like the most is that we let people experience the town and have real conversations."
Many of those conversations will undoubtedly be about Dylan who left Minnesota in 1960 to go perform in the Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City with hopes of meeting his idol, Woody Guthrie. Two years after landing in New York Dylan would release his first album, "Bob Dylan," according to CNN.
Listing all of Dylan's hits would take far too much space but some of the songs he is most known for are; "Blowin' in the Wind", "All Along the Watchtower", "Highway 61 Revisited," "Like a Rolling Stone," and "Rainy Day Women #12 &35."
In a piece in The Huffington Post Anne Margaret Daniel described just how important Bob Dylan's music is to her, a sentiment echoed by millions around the world.
"No one uses words the way Dylan does, combining extremes- humor and anger, love and hate, bright and dark, past and present - with lyric grace and perfect rhyme," Daniel writes. "To call him a poet, which he is, doesn't begin to define Dylan, though, for it leaves out he also supplies to his - not just poems, but- songs."
This summer the 72 year old Dylan will hit the road with Wilco and My Morning Jacket as he continues on what his fans jokingly refer to as "The Neverending Tour."
