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Bob Dylan Inducted Into Gibson's Revolutionary Hall of Fame

12/14/2010
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(Gibson) Gibson.com is pleased to present the inaugural class of the Gibson Revolutionary Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame honors musical artists whose contributions went beyond mere entertainment and actually altered the art form, the business or the technology of popular music. This year's inductees were chosen in a recent poll on Gibson.com, asking fans and pros to decide the Top 50 Most Revolutionary Artists of the Past 100 Years. The list of inductees is composed of the top five vote recipients from the readers poll, as well as the top five from the overall combined poll of fans and professionals. As there was some overlap between the lists, a total of seven artists have been honored. Today we celebrate one such honoree: the legendary Bob Dylan.

In the early 1960s, Bob Dylan was the mumbled voice of revolution � whether he liked it or not. Amongst all the upheavals, all the excitement and tragedy of that discordant decade, what Dylan said was heartening and poetic, and it made great sense to young people. The mop-haired folk troubadour authored anthems "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They are-a-Changin'," among other masterpieces, that thrust him into the spotlight as a reluctant hero of both the civil rights and anti-war movements. Lyrics like "You better start swimmin' / Or you'll sink like a stone" fed that generation's call for change but also summarizedthe ethos that would steer Dylan's entire profession: Avoid stagnation at all costs.

Dylan began, innocuously enough, as Robert Allen Zimmerman. Born in 1941 to a pair of Jewish parents in Duluth, Minnesota, he was raised on Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Robert Johnson and Little Richard. For 50 years, he's funneled these sundry influences into his own music; time and again, with little notice, he's rolled up his sleeves and rummaged around in genres like folk, country, gospel, rock, blues and jazz. more on this story

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