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JIM BICKEL: This Tuesday is the 70th birthday of one of the most admired and influential artists of our time, Bob Dylan, who, for decades has entertained audiences around the world, spent his formative years right here in Minnesota. He was born in Duluth, raised in Hibbing, learned to be a folk singer in Minneapolis, and still owns a farm near the Twin Cities.

[BOB DYLAN, "GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY"]

If you're traveling in the north country fair where the winds hit heavy on the borderline, remember me to one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine

This hour, we're going to explore how Bob Dylan's music was influenced by his time in Minnesota. We'll talk to people that knew him and hear about the music and events that shaped him. This is Boy From the North Country, Bob Dylan in Minnesota. I'm Jim Bickel.

[BOB DYLAN, "GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY"]

We'll begin our story in June of 1920. A traveling circus had arrived in Duluth. Something happened and six Black men who worked for the circus were arrested and accused of rape. As they were held in the Downtown Duluth jail, news of the arrest spread and a mob gathered in the street. They broke into the jail and three of the men were hanged from a streetlight.

Afterwards, the Lynch mob posed for a photograph with the bodies, and that photograph was later turned into a postcard. Abe Zimmerman was nine years old at the time and lived two blocks away. Many years later, his son would take that story and incorporate it into his music.

[BOB DYLAN, "DESOLATION ROW"]

They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown. The beauty parlor is filled with sailors The circus is in town.

Here comes the blind commissioner. They've got him in a trance. One hand is tied to the tight rope walker, the other is in his pants. And the riot squad, they're restless. They need somewhere to go as lady and I look out tonight from Desolation Road.

Bob Dylan's grandfather, Zigman Zimmerman, came to Duluth in 1906 from the city of Odessa in what is now the Ukraine, which was then Russia. He left Odessa. Soon after, hundreds of Jews were killed in some of the worst anti-Semitic rioting that city had seen.

His son, Abe, was born in Duluth. He got a job with Standard Oil and he met a woman named Beatty Stone and they got married. Their son, Robert Allen Zimmerman, was born May 24, 1941. And Duluth is where Bob Dylan spent the first six years of his life.

[BOB DYLAN, "SOMETHING THERE IS ABOUT YOU"]

Thought I'd shaken the wonder and the phantoms of my youth. Rainy days on the Great Lakes, walking the hills of old Duluth. There was me and Danny Lopez, cold eyes, black night, and then there was Ruth.

1946, Abe Zimmerman contracted polio. He survived, but was unable to continue working for Standard Oil. At the time, his two brothers were opening electric appliance store in the Iron Range community of Hibbing.

That's also where Abe's wife, Beatty was from. And so they picked up the family and moved to Hibbing. That's where Bob Dylan met Leroy Hoikkala when they were both 14 years old.

LEROY HOIKKALA: He was independent, impatient and restless. He really, really was.

JIM BICKEL: Hoikkala says they would get together on a regular basis and see what downtown Hibbing had to offer.

LEROY HOIKKALA: Bob would say, let's go on a mission, and I'd go, OK. So let's do what we did last week and I'd go, all right. So we'd do the same thing and stop by the same places all the time. We'd stop at Carlson's Shoe Repair and Hautala Music on First Avenue. And Bob would always look at the guitars, and it added to the vibes, of course.

So anyhow, then we go to Steven's Grocery, and we'd look at the magazines. They had a lot of magazines there.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

- You know something?

- No, what?

- You read too many comic books.

[END PLAYBACK]

LEROY HOIKKALA: So we look at the magazines with James Dean, because James Dean was really one of our idols.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

- Oh, he's real abstract. He's different.

- That's right. I'm cute, too.

[END PLAYBACK]

LEROY HOIKKALA: And he had his collar up. Well, the next day, everybody had their collars up, including Bob.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

- Is that meaning me? Is that meaning me?

- What?

- The chicken.

- Yes.

- You shouldn't call me that.

[END PLAYBACK]

JIM BICKEL: Perhaps in an effort to broaden his horizons beyond what he could see in the movies and in downtown Hibbing, his family sent Bob to a summer camp in Wisconsin. It was started by the Twin Cities Jewish community, and that's where he met another camper by the name of Dick Cohen.

DICK COHEN: And one of the reasons these kids, especially from Northern Minnesota or from other communities, would come to this camp because they didn't have a lot of Jewish socialization in their life, and it was just an opportunity for them to get some of that. And because of that, when these kids would come to the Twin cities, Bob especially, we would have social dances, snowballs, or mixers, or whatever they called them. And so Bob would come to town quite frequently, actually, partially because of these events, but also just on other weekends.

We would have these parties in people's homes and Bob would show up at the party, and play rock and roll music on the piano until the parents would come down and kick him out. And we would go from one party to the next, sort of, and he was kind of the new kid who came in and blew the house away. But before we even knew what that meant, he just came in and surprised everybody and stopped the momentum of whatever was going on, and changed the momentum to his music. And it was just very exciting.

And so Bob would say to me when I'm on tour with him, he'd say, so what'd you think of that concert? And I'd say, bob, it was great, but it was not as good as when you played "Baby, Let Me Bang Your Box" in Nancy's basement.

JIM BICKEL: Bob learned that song from a 1954 recording by the group called The Toppers.

[THE TOPPERS, "BABY, LET ME BANG YOUR BOX"]

Well, my baby gave a party the other night, the party was getting dead. I spied a piano in the corner, looked at my baby and said, baby, let me bang your box. Baby, let me bang your box. Baby, let me bang your 88, going to play till the whole house rocks.

This is the kind of rhythm and blues music that Bob was discovering in record stores in the Twin Cities and hearing on late night radio broadcasts that he could pick up in Hibbing. His high school friend, John Bucklen, recorded some of those broadcasts.

He also recorded conversations with Bob about music. In this recording from 1958 when he was 17, Bob offers his thoughts on who was copying who in the music industry.

BOB DYLAN: I mean, you know, when you hear music like The Diamonds. Think The Diamonds. They're on this big, popular record, you know. So they're popular, big stars.

But where do they get all these songs? You know where they get all these songs? They get all these songs from little groups.

They copy all the little groups. Same thing with Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley, who does he copy? He copies Clyde McPhatter. He copies Little Richard--

JOHN BUCKLEN: Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

BOB DYLAN: He copies The Drifters.

JOHN BUCKLEN: Wait a minute. Name four songs that Elvis Presley's copied from those little groups.

BOB DYLAN: He copies all Little Richard's songs like "Rip It Up," "Long, Tall Sally," "Ready Teddy." What's the other one?

JOHN BUCKLEN: "Money Honey"

BOB DYLAN: No, "Money honey," he copied from Clyde McPhatter. He copied-- "I Was the One," he copied that from The Coasters. He copied "I Got a Woman" from Ray Charles.

JIM BICKEL: Now at the time, Bob was copying the frenetic piano playing style of his rocking idol, Little Richard. He even composed a tribute to him. John Bucklen captured it on his reel-to-reel recorder.

[MUFFLED SINGING]

Bob got to show off his piano playing abilities at several assemblies at the Hibbing High School. Nancy Peterson was a student at Hibbing high as well. She remembers one performance in particular.

NANCY PETERSON: Bob played the piano in the style of Jerry Lee Lewis, so standing and playing chords. And I don't remember having seen anything like that before, and I didn't quite know what to make of it. And for those of us who were-- I was a 15-year-old high school student who had not heard music that sounded like Jerry Lee Lewis, and rock and roll, and so on before. And so I wanted to be cool. I didn't know whether I should like this stuff or hate it. It sounded very strange to me. And it occurs to me that it was probably the loudest music any of us had ever heard.

Some students were adding to that by cheering loudly. And then I looked around and I saw that the teachers clearly hated it. Their body language just showed you that they were cringing, or they had their arms folded. The teacher a couple of rows in front of me had her hands clasped over her ears to try to block it out. And that said to me, oh yeah, this is cool. I should like this.

So for at least that moment, we all liked it. But that was the performance where the high school principal decided to shut it down. And so they closed the curtains.

JIM BICKEL: So you remember that. It was kind of in the middle of the song or something that they actually closed the--

NANCY PETERSON: Yes. They were still performing, and the curtains closed. And they still performed for a while until somebody figured out how to cut the power to them.

JIM BICKEL: Bob was in several bands when he was in high school. One of them was called the Golden Chords. That band started out with his old friend, Leroy Hoikkala, on drums, and guitarist Monte Edwardson. Hoikkala recalls that he was walking down the street with Monty one day and they ran into Bob.

LEROY HOIKKALA: We were walking down from the high school on a summer day down to our jobs, and Bob was going to Chet Crippa's music store. And he said, hey, I hear you guys been jamming at Monty's. He said, let's-- why don't we jam in my garage? And we said, sure. So Monty and I said, well, we'll see you Saturday.

So we went over there Saturday and started playing, and Bob knew what he wanted. Even the drums, he said, keep it simple. He says, no pounding. Keep it real quiet and simple.

OK, that's easy to do. So anyway, that's how we kind of started. Monty played and Bob played, and we were in the garage.

JIM BICKEL: And he was-- they were both playing guitar then?

LEROY HOIKKALA: Yes, right. Monty was playing lead guitar and Bob was playing rhythm. And then I believe he had a harmonica with a real cheapy thing around his neck. It wasn't a real fancy one.

And Bob would play some of these songs. I never heard of a lot of them because he followed the stuff from rhythm and blues. And around here, I've never heard rhythm blues, you know. And this is kind of funny because his mom was just a bubbly person, really nice. Oh, she was a sweetheart.

But she'd come out, because it was an attached garage to the house in a way, through a hallway. And she'd come out and she'd say, Bobby, this is getting kind of loud. And we do have neighbors, Bob. He goes, yeah, mom.

I remember once after school, we're going to work, Monty, myself, and Bob was with us. And one of the neighbor kids hollered, hey, are you guys going to practice in the garage this weekend? Bob said, what? We don't practice. We just play music.

And a lot of the things, Bob made up. He'd make a song up and Monty said, what's the name of that one? He goes, I have no idea. I just did it.

And he changed it. He would take a popular song and change it his way. So we just played. That's all we did.

The Golden Chords played at the Hibbing Moose Club and at a local barbecue joint. One time, they rented the Hibbing Armory and sold tickets for $0.50 a piece. It's believed that was Bob's first paying gig.

In 1959, he graduated from high school and wrote in his yearbook that his ambition was to join Little Richard.

[LITTLE RICHARD, "RIP IT UP"]

Well, it Saturday night and I just got paid. Fool about my money, don't try to save. My heart says, go, go, have a time 'cause it's Saturday night and I'm feeling fine.

I'm gonna rock it up, I'm gonna rip it up. I'm going to shake it up, gonna ball it up. I'm going to rock it up and ball tonight.

You're listening to Boy From the North Country, Bob Dylan in Minnesota. I'm Jim Bickel. In 1959, Bob enrolled in the University of Minnesota. That's where he reconnected with his old friend from summer camp, Dick Cohen.

DICK COHEN: He was interested in living outside of a dorm, and his parents want him to live in a dorm, and he wound up living in a fraternity house, Sigma alpha mu fraternity house, where I was also a member. And he definitely was not a fraternity member. He was not a pledge, even though he lived in the house, and I think that was part of the requirement, sort of. But he was definitely not into the fraternity scene.

I would be coming to school at 9 o'clock in the morning, he'd be coming home from being out all night. And his room at the fraternity was really a great room. He did a painting, a drawing in pencil on the wall of a six foot high, tall picture of a face. And he kept improving the mouth, and it was erased, and it was-- and I can see it in my mind to this day. I wish I owned it. The House has been torn down long ago.

JIM BICKEL: The people that Bob was encountering at the University of Minnesota were not listening to rock and roll. Folk and authentic blues is what the aspiring musicians there were listening to. One of them was Dave Ray.

[DAVE RAY, "STOP THAT THING"]

Well now, pretty mama, pretty the mama. Tell me, what's on your mind? How come you're doing [INAUDIBLE]? Hey hey, mama. Baby, won't you stop that thing one time for me? Hey, hey, mama. Mama, won't you stop that thing?

One of the people that was part of the local music scene in the campus community of Dinkytown was a woman named Marilyn Matheny.

MARILYN MATHENY: I would say that John Koerner and Dave Ray were considered the stars. They were really clearly very talented. They were just soaking up music, learning quickly, had a lot of charisma on stage, and everybody quite admired them.

JIM BICKEL: Spider John Koerner has this memory of his first encounter with the man who was now calling himself Bob Dylan.

JOHN KOERNER: The memory I have was a bunch of us, half a dozen or so, bought some wine and we went back in the back of the chemistry building. There was a loading dock back there. And we had our guitars and sat around and played and sang. It was the beginning of a time, quite a bit of time in Dinkytown when we all get to know each other, and hang out, and perform together, and so on.

JIM BICKEL: At the time, Marilyn Matheny lived in an apartment above the 10 o'clock Scholar, a local coffeehouse.

MARILYN MATHENY: Most of the men-- not most of them, but at least half of the men in the group that I hung out with were really enamored of folk music, and they were learning to play guitars, almost all of them, and learning chords, first of all, and then learning songs, and swapping songs, and learning from each other. And they'd get together, either in our apartment, or in other apartments, or the 10 o'clock Scholar. And the owner of the Scholar at that point decided that if he had some of these people come in and play music, that maybe that would bring more customers in.

So he would enlist-- I don't know that he paid anything. Or if he did, it was very little, to have these people come in. Well, Bob Dylan arrived and was hanging around with the same group of people. Very interested in what they were doing, but very introverted and rather shy, and didn't say a lot.

JIM BICKEL: Another woman who knew Bob Dylan at the time was Ellen Simer. We reached her via Skype from her home in Switzerland. She told us what it was like to date Bob Dylan.

ELLEN SIMER: He never washed and he had really hideous teeth. And the idea of kissing somebody with his green teeth was kind of like, how would you want to do that? But nevertheless, he did have something that was quite attractive about him, but it was very focused on him very definitely. He was a fascinating person who had an ability to get things from people, even though he was an extraordinarily selfish person.

JIM BICKEL: What he really wanted from Ellen Simer was access to her father's record collection. Her father, Mike Baker, was the president of the Minneapolis Folklore Society and had a huge collection of folk music, songs that Bob had never heard before.

ELLEN SIMER: Bob could not get enough of listening to Cisco Houston, and I think there was another singer, which could have been Woody Guthrie, singing "Those Brown eyes." He played it over and over again.

[WOODY GUTHRIE, "THOSE BROWN EYES"]

Those brown eyes I love so well. Those Brown eyes I long to see. How I long for those brown eyes, strangers they have grown to be.

Ellen Simer's father, Mike Baker, was very protective of his records. But Marilyn Matheny recalls that when he had the chance, Bob Dylan had no qualms about helping himself to other people's records.

MARILYN MATHENY: We're at a party at-- just over our apartment, a friend of ours who lived just over our apartment. And it was late and we all had too much to drink. And we were on our way to a bar. So, of course, where do you go when you have too much to drink, but a bar?

He said, just a minute. Wait, wait, wait. He said, watch the door for me. And he stuck some records in his knapsack.

And he said, he's got so many, he's not going to miss him anyway. He did, and I was kind of alarmed because this was a friend of mine, and yet he was a friend of mine. And I felt really torn in this position of what do I do.

JIM BICKEL: A collection that Bob clearly coveted was Harry Smith's Anthology of American folk music. He loved listening to songs like this one, "Pennie's Farm," recorded in 1929 by the Bentley Boys.

[BENTLEY BOYS, "DOWN ON PENNY'S FARM"]

Come here, ladies and gentlemen, listen to the song. Sang it to you right, but you might think it's wrong. May make you mad, but I mean no harm. It's just about the renters own Pennie's farm.

It's hard times in the country out on Penny's farm. You move out on Penny's farm, plant a little crop of 'bacco and a little crop of corn. Come around to see you, going to plant and plot till you get yourself a mortgage on everything you got. It's hard times in the country out on Penny's farm.

And later, while he was living in New York, Bob Dylan was inspired to write his own take on that song.

[BOB DYLAN, "HARD TIMES IN NEW YORK TOWN"]

Come, you ladies and gentlemen, listen to my song. Sing it to you right, but you might think it's wrong. Just a little glimpse of a story I'll tell about an East Coast city that you all know well. It's hard times from the country living down in New York town.

Oh, New York City is a friendly old town, from Washington Heights to Harlem on down. There's a mighty many people in the middle and all around. They'll kick you when you're up and knock you when you're down. It's hard times. And the country living down in New York Town.

In the Twin Cities when Bob got gigs playing in coffeehouses and pizza parlors, his old friend, Dick Cohen, was often in attendance.

DICK COHEN: At that time, when he was performing, he was playing at all the 10 o'clock Scholar, and The Triangle, and all these little coffeehouses around town. And I was very into music at that time and into folk music particularly. And so I would follow him around. I would go to those events.

JIM BICKEL: What was the reception like in those venues at that time? How popular was he?

DICK COHEN: Yeah, not very popular. He was just another singer and he was also not doing a lot of original stuff then. It was a beatnik crowd at the time and he was just one of the entertainers.

I mean, there were Bongo players and there were other types of music, too. So he wasn't-- he didn't have a great fan base. I mean, he was just a good performer, you know?

JIM BICKEL: It sounds like he was just learning folk music at that time, right?

DICK COHEN: Well, exactly. I think he was learning stage presence a little bit. I mean, he was always into the music part of it, but I think he was learning about performing in front of people.

JIM BICKEL: 1960, a crude recording was made of Bob playing in a friend's apartment.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUFFLED SINGING]

MARILYN MATHENY: He had a kind of a sweet voice, actually, which is so jarring when I hear his voice as it matured. He sung a lot of ballads, nice kind of sweet, simple ballads, and didn't have a big following. But generally, everybody said, well, he's got a nice voice, but he can't play guitar. So it was kind of odd when he later sang with this just the raspy voice. I wasn't sure where that came from, whether he damaged his voice, or whether it was purpose that he'd made that change.

[BOB DYLAN, "NOBODY KNOWS YOU"]

Oh yeah, when you're down and out.

Another significant thing that happened to Dylan while he lived in Minneapolis was that he fell in love with the music of Woody Guthrie.

[WOODY GUTHRIE, "TALKING COLUMBIA"]

Well, I pulled out my pencil, scribbled this song. I figured all in salmon just couldn't be wrong. And salmon fish is pretty shrewd. They got senators and politicians, too.

In his autobiography Chronicles, Dylan describes what it felt like one afternoon when he sat down and listened to nothing but Guthrie music. He writes, all these songs together, one after another made my head spin and made me want to gasp.

[WOODY GUTHRIE, "TALKING COLUMBIA"]

I've been laying out 90 days way down the road.

I had heard Guthrie before, but mainly just a song here and there, mostly things that he sang with other artists. I hadn't actually heard him, not in this Earth-shattering kind of way. I couldn't believe it.

[WOODY GUTHRIE, "JESUS CHRIST"]

Jesus Christ was a man that traveled through the land, hard working man and brave. He said to the--

Guthrie had such a grip on things. He was so poetic, and tough, and rhythmic. There was so much intensity and his voice was like a stiletto.

[WOODY GUTHRIE, "JESUS CHRIST"]

Yes, Jesus was a man, a carpenter.

Ellen Simer recalls Dylan expressing his devotion to Guthrie during a party at her house.

ELLEN SIMER: And on that front yard of 2012 Girard Avenue South, just before he went to New York, he was drunk and he was going around on the yard, and then going down the street calling out, woody, I'm coming. Woody, Woody.

JIM BICKEL: It wasn't long before he was on his way to New York in search of Woody Guthrie. Marilyn Matheny recalls that before he left, he was not the most popular man in Dinkytown.

MARILYN MATHENY: He was not completely straightforward with us. He made up stuff. He wanted to be somebody and he wanted to be bigger than he was. And there was a period when Bobby was really-- everyone was dumping on him. They were just so hard on him.

And he'd either done or said some things that had really annoyed people. And one of the things he did was he went on this trip. He was going to go on this big trip, I think, to Colorado and sing in this famous place. And he ran out of money or something, and ended up washing dishes in North Dakota, so the story goes.

But when he came back, no one believed him that he had really gone on this trip, or done these things. They just thought he was making stuff up. So they kind of dumped on him a lot and I felt bad for him during that time.

It was just not good. And he left not long after that and probably has some bitter feelings about how he was treated there. And I don't blame him for that.

JIM BICKEL: Fourth street is the Main Street in Dinkytown, and it's not a stretch to conclude that Bob was thinking about his old buddies back in Minneapolis when he wrote "Positively 4th Street."

[BOB DYLAN, "POSITIVELY 4TH STREET"]

I know the reason that you taught me behind my back. I used to be among the crowd you're in with. Do you take me for such a fool to think I'd make contact with one who tries to hide what he don't know to begin with?

You see me on the street. You always act surprised. You say, how are you? Good luck. But you don't mean it.

JIM BICKEL: You're listening to Boy From the North Country, Bob Dylan in Minnesota. I'm Jim Bickel. In January of 1961, Dylan moved to New York and quickly became immersed in the Greenwich Village folk scene. And his singing, and guitar playing, and songwriting abilities improved dramatically.

Dylan even likened it to the old legend of the blues musician who goes to the crossroads and makes a deal with the devil for great talent. He talked about that during Martin Scorsese's documentary, No Direction Home.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

- That's when I went to the crossroads and made a big deal you know, one night. And then I went back to Minneapolis and I was like, hey, where's this guy been? He'd been to the crossroads.

JIM BICKEL: Dylan visited Minneapolis less than a year after he'd moved away, and fellow musician Tony Glover was really impressed by how much he'd improved. Glover recorded Dylan performing in a friend's apartment.

[BOB DYLAN, "I WAS YOUNG WHEN I LEFT HOME"]

I was young when I left home and I've been out of rambling round. And I never wrote a letter to my home, to my home, not to my home. And I never wrote a letter to my home.

JIM BICKEL: 1961 turned out to be a real turning point in Dylan's career. Late that year, he signed a recording deal with Columbia Records. Back in Hibbing, Leroy Hoikkala recalls being at work at Feldman's department store and getting a message that Bob's father wanted to see him.

LEROY HOIKKALA: Mr. Feldman-- Herman came and said, Leroy says, go to Mike Electric. They want to talk to you, or show you something. I said, OK, great.

So I went over there and Abe was over there. And he said, come here. Come here. Look at this. Look at this. You got to see this.

And he had a Harry Belafonte record. And he said, listen, who's playing harmonica on this. And it was Bob. So he was really proud of him.

[HARRY BELAFONTE, "MIDNIGHT SPECIAL"]

So let the midnight special shine a light on me. Let the midnight special shine its everloving light on me.

Nancy Peterson had a job at Feldman's department store as well. That's where she became friends with Bob's mother.

NANCY PETERSON: Bob's mother, Beatty, was the sweetest, most gregarious person I think I've ever met. She sold women's dresses at Feldman's department store, and she cared about everybody. She had known my mom and she had liked her.

And so when I got a part time job and worked at Feldman's for quite a few years, Beatty was my best friend in the store. And she always asked about me and my family. And then as her son became active in the music industry, she would tell me things about him. I got a postcard from Bob. He's traveling here and there.

I do remember when she told me that her son was dating Joan Baez. And to me, Joan Baez was the most wonderful singer there had ever been. And so that was a big sign that Bob was hitting the big time, I thought.

JIM BICKEL: Dylan's first album was mostly covers of traditional folk songs, but it was his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, that really established him as a writer and a star in the folk music scene. It wasn't long before he was being called the voice of his generation.

[BOB DYLAN, "A HARD RAIN'S A-GONNA FALL"]

And I'll tell it, and speak it, and think it, and breathe it. And reflect from the mountains so all souls can see it. And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinking.

And I'll know my song well before I start singing. And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard rain's a-gonna to fall.

Even though he was living in New York, Dylan didn't leave his Minnesota roots behind, and you can hear it in his music. Dave Pichaske is a Professor at Southwest State University in Marshall. He says you can hear the Iron Range accent in songs like "Blowin' in the Wind."

DAVID PICHASKE: If you listen closely on the "s" that makes a plural sound, is a zzz sound. Cars, boys. But if you get up under the range, it's a nonvoiced. It's a cars, yours. And if you listen to years and years in there, how many years, how many years? it's not that voiced z, and that's that Midwest voice coming in that song.

[BOB DYLAN, "BLOWIN' IN THE WIND"]

Yes, and how many years can a mountain exist 'fore it is washed to the sea? Yes, and how many years can some people exist before they allowed to be free? Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind.

Pichaske is the author of North Country Blues, A Midwest Framework for the Songs of Bob Dylan. He says many of the words, and pronunciations, and themes in Bob Dylan's music are drawn from the place that he grew up, and you can hear it in songs like "North Country Blues," which is all about the Iron Range.

[BOB DYLAN, "NORTH COUNTRY BLUES"]

Come and gather round, friends, and I'll tell you a tale. And when the red iron appeared to run plenty but the cardboard filled windows and old men on the benches tell you now that the whole town is empty.

DAVID PICHASKE: This is a song about the closing of the mines, the shutting down of the employment opportunities, and people leaving up there. But there's a lot of layers underneath there, other than the economics. There's this us/them, the man come to speak, and he said in a week, number 11 is closing, and he comes from out east. And there's this antagonism, Dylan said at one point, they hated Eastern mine owners a lot more than they hated communists up there on the range. So that's buried in the song there.

[BOB DYLAN, "NORTH COUNTRY BLUES"]

And the shaft was soon shut and my work was cut. And the fire in the air, it felt frozen. "Till a man come to speak, and he said, in one week, that number 11 was closing.

They complain in the east, they pay them too high. They see that your ore ain't worth digging. That it's much cheaper down in the South American towns where the miners work almost for nothing.

In 1974, Dylan bought some property in a rural area less than an hour's drive from the Twin Cities. It's a place he would come in the summer to spend time with his family. In 1975, he was at the farm and listening to some of the songs he had recorded and was planning to release on the album Blood on the Tracks.

[BOB DYLAN, "TANGLED UP IN BLUE"]

So now I'm going back again. I got the guitar her somehow. All the people we used to know are an illusion to me now. Some are mathematicians, some are doctors wives.

I don't know how it all got started, I don't know what they're doing with their lives. But me, I'm still on the road heading for another joint. We always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view. Tangled up in blue.

Dylan didn't like the way about half of the tracks sounded. Now, his brother, David, was also in the music business. He was a producer in the Twin Cities. So Dylan asked him to assemble a group of local musicians to rerecord some of the tracks. One of them was guitarist Kevin Odegard.

KEVIN ODEGARD: We were sitting on the ledge playing with "Tangled Up in Blue" in the key of G, and it was just kind of laying there. It wasn't doing much. It was OK.

And Bob turned to me, and in an unguarded moment, I said-- he said, well, what do you think? And I said, well, it's passable. He stood up and paced around a little bit, looked around and wondered if we might have an idea to move it up a key. My suggestion was to move it from G to A to give a little more energy, to give a little more punch, to give a little more bite.

He wouldn't try it at first. And then he looked around the room and my mates gave me a vote of confidence. He started seeing head shaking. So he turned and looked at me, and he said, OK, let's give it a try.

And we did. And it worked. And about a third of the way through the first verse, he cut the take and he just looked in at Paul Martinson and he said, well, let's roll this. This is happening.

And we rolled it. And that's what you hear on the record. There's no mix, there's nothing. That was it.

[BOB DYLAN, "TANGLED UP IN BLUE"]

Early one morning, the sun was shining. I was laying in bed, wondered if she changed it all, if her hair was still red. Her folks, they said our lives together sure was going to be rough. They never did like mama's homemade dress, papa's bankbook wasn't big enough. And I was standing on the side of the road, rain falling on my shoes. Heading out for the East coast, Lord knows I've paid some dudes getting through, tangled up in blue.

Peter Ostroushko also played on the Minneapolis sessions. He told Minnesota Public Radio's Cathy Wurzer that he took the job, despite the fact that he had walking pneumonia.

PETER OSTROUSHKO: As we got there, they were already packing up. They were packing up their stuff. And someone came and brought Dylan over and introduced us, and we met him. And he looked at my instruments. I had a fiddle and a mandolin with me and he said, what's this one? And I said, that's a mandolin.

He said, Oh. Well, I think there's a song I'd like to do that mandolin would sound real good on. So everyone pulled their instruments out again, and he taught us this song, "If You See Her, Say Hello" and we recorded it. I went home, went back to bed, got up in the morning, and-- I had had a fever the whole time. I mean, I really--

CATHY WURZER: So you're still thinking this is a dream? You're delirious?

PETER OSTROUSHKO: Yeah. I woke up in the morning thinking it was a dream.

CATHY WURZER: Oh.

PETER OSTROUSHKO: And I called my friend down at the podium, Jim. And I said, Jim, you wouldn't believe this dream I had last night. And he listened to me describe this tale, and he said, buddy, that's no dream. You were there.

[BOB DYLAN, "IF YOU SEE HER, SAY HELLO"]

If you see her, say, hello. She might be Tangiers. She left here last early spring, isn't living there, I hear.

Say for me that I'm all right. Those things get kind of slow. She might think that I've forgotten her. Don't tell her, it isn't so.

You're listening to Boy From the North Country, Bob Dylan in Minnesota. I'm Jim Bickel. Outside of his immediate family, one of the few people that Bob Dylan kept in touch with from his Minnesota days was Larry Kegan.

DICK COHEN: Larry Kegan. Was one of Bob's only true friends. I never saw Bob talk or be with anybody, anybody like he was with Larry.

JIM BICKEL: Dick Cohen knew Larry and Bob from their time together at summer camp. Gene LaFond was another friend of Larry's. He says Larry actually performed on the first record that Bob ever made.

GENE LAFOND: In Saint Paul, there used to be a place, a music store where you could go make a record for $5. And Bob used to come down from Hibbing and stay with Larry on the weekends. And they loved doo wop songs and they went to this music store and paid their $5.

And there was a piano in the room. And they sat down and Larry-- or Bob banged on the piano and they sang these doo wop songs. And I think there's six or eight songs on it. And you can tell it's Bob, and you can tell it's Larry, and I think they were 15 years old at the time.

JIM BICKEL: But Larry's life would take a dramatic turn soon after he made this record. It happened while his family was on vacation in Florida.

GENE LAFOND: He met some young guy that was diving off a wall into the water and the guy kind of egged him into doing. It was a young kid. And he says, come on, you can do this.

And Larry didn't realize that you had to wait for the waves to come in for the water to be high enough. He jumped off this wall, timed it wrong, and landed in three feet of water and broke his neck. And somehow, somebody was there to help him get him out of there and save his life.

JIM BICKEL: While Larry was adjusting to life in a wheelchair, Bob was becoming an international star. The next time Larry heard from him was when Bob was recovering from his own injuries. Dick Cohen tells that story.

DICK COHEN: He was in a motorcycle accident in upstate New York and was told that he might be paralyzed from this accident. And at that time, he made contact with Larry again to say, Larry, I remembered-- thought a lot about you because I was almost paralyzed. And Larry said, Bob, where have you been for the last 10 years? That's not the way you treat a friend. Let's get together. And at that point, they kind of rekindled the friendship.

And so Bob would call Larry and say, hey, I'm going on tour. I'm going up and down the East Coast. You want to come? And Larry would say, absolutely.

And he'd get in the van and he would drive out there, and he would take people with him. Myself was someone he would take, another friend named Gene LaFond, who is another great musician here in town now.

GENE LAFOND: It's first time I went out with Larry was 1975 for the Rolling Thunder tour, which was just incredible. It was a magical thing because it had this carnival atmosphere and they were all dressed and painted. And he was like this shaman leader of the whole thing. Had so many different people on stage and great musicians. And it was really a magical thing.

[BOB DYLAN, "TONIGHT I'LL BE STAYING HERE WITH YOU"]

Throw my ticket in the wind. Throw my mattress out that door. Throw my love in the sand 'cause you got to understand that tonight I'll be staying here with you. I could've left this town by noon, but tonight [INAUDIBLE] some place new. But I'm feeling a little bit scattered and your love was all that mattered. So tonight, I'll be staying here with you. Get ready, 'cause tonight, I'll be staying here with you.

In addition to following Bob on tour, Larry traveled to Durango, Mexico, where Bob had a part in the Sam Peckinpah Western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Here's the trailer.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

- James Coburn.

- Bill?

- Kris Kristofferson.

- Come on in, Pat.

- And introducing in his first dramatic motion picture performance, recording star Bob Dylan.

[GUNSHOT]

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, legends in their own time. But time was running out.

DICK COHEN: Larry was invited by Bob down to the shooting where Kris Kristofferson was, and Sam Peckinpah was there. And Larry lived in Mexico part of his life, and spoke Spanish fluently, and had these Mexican kids, working with him all the time, helping him. I think Bob was very comfortable knowing that Larry spoke Spanish fluently and was very aware of what to do in Mexico, how to live on the streets, so to speak, versus as a tourist. And so Larry and Bob were very, very close there.

[BOB DYLAN, "ROMANCE IN DURANGO"]

BOB DYLAN: This is called "Romance in Durango." Remember Durango, Larry?

[BOB DYLAN, "ROMANCE IN DURANGO"]

Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun, dust on my face and my cape. Me and Magdalena on the run. I think this time, we shall escape. Sold my guitar to the baker's son for a few crumbs and a place to hide, but I can get another one. And I'll play for Magdalena as we ride.

DICK COHEN: Larry Kegan was a performer as well. They were on tour and they were traveling out East. And Bob asked Larry if he would come up and sing a song.

And Larry was nervous, needless to say, and worked on it for days, and was really worried about it. But he went up, got up on stage, and he sang. "No Money Down" is what he sang And Bob played the saxophone behind it, the only time ever that anybody ever heard or saw him play a saxophone.

[BOB DYLAN, "NO MONEY DOWN"]

So I eased on my break and pulled down the drive. Gunned my motor twice and I stepped inside. The dealer came to me, said, trade in that Ford. And I'll put you in a car that will eat up the road.

JIM BICKEL: In 1990 and '91, Larry and guitarist, Gene LaFond played at the Bridge School Benefit that Neil Young organizes for charity every year. After they performed, Larry spoke to the crowd.

[APPLAUSE]

LARRY KEGAN: I just want to say that the biggest handicap that disabled people have to deal with, adults and children alike, are mainly the perceptions and attitudes of other people. Yeah, they say the human body is God's greatest masterpiece, but I have learned never to underestimate the power of the human spirit.

JIM BICKEL: Over the years, as Larry's health deteriorated, he wasn't able to travel with Dylan anymore. On September 11th, 2001, as the world was learning of the terrorist attacks on America, Larry had a heart attack and died. He was 59 years old. Because flights were grounded everywhere, Dylan wasn't able to travel to the Memorial service. He did send his condolences in a telegram.

[BOB DYLAN, "RING THEM BELLS"]

Ring them bells, Sweet Martha, for the poor man's son. Ring them bells so the world will know that God is one. Oh, the shepherd is asleep, where the willows weep, and the mountains are filled with the lost sea. Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf.

Ring them bells for all of us who are left. Ring them bells for the chosen few who will judge the many when the game is through. Ring them bells for the child that flies, for the child that cried when her innocence died.

Ring them bells, Saint Catherine, from the top of the room. Ring them from the fortress before the lilies that bloom, for the lines are long and the fighting is strong and they're breaking down the distance between right and wrong.

Since 1988, Dylan has been playing about 100 shows a year in what has been dubbed "The Never Ending Tour." In 1992, he played five shows in a row at the Minneapolis Orpheum Theatre. Dick Cohen brought his mother to see him there for the first time.

DICK COHEN: I took my mom to the concert, and my mom, coincidentally, was a friend of Bob's mom, who lived here at the time, and they were in the same Mahjong club, or something. And so they were friendly. So we went to the concert and when we were walking out, a woman, a girl walked up to Bob's mom and said, what's it like knowing that you gave birth to the messiah?

And so Beatty didn't know what to say. She just kind of ignored it and everything. And afterwards, I asked my mom what she thought about that. And she said-- she says, I don't get it. She says, I couldn't understand one word he said.

[BOB DYLAN, "DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?]

Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy, do you hear what I hear?

Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy.

Do you hear what I hear? A song, a song high above the tree with a voice as big as the sea, with a voice as big as the sea.

JIM BICKEL: Dylan has a reputation for not being an overly sentimental person, but he did choose a historic occasion to return to the University of Minnesota campus for the first time since he dropped out as a freshman. It was November 4, 2008, the night that Barack Obama was elected president. University of Minnesota Professor Mark Seeley was in the crowd at Northrop Auditorium.

MARK SEELEY: There was little commentary from him. I remember at one point, he got quite a cheer later on in the concert when he said, it looks like things are about to change. One other thing that was very striking, Jim, was you look across the audience that night and there were people from every walk of life. There was every age range, people from any lifestyle you could think of, everybody mixed together, and that was pretty exciting just by itself.

JIM BICKEL: Dylan has performed in the city where he was born, Duluth. But since he's moved away, he's never put on a show in the place where he grew up, Hibbing. Colleen Sheehy has spent a lot of time in Hibbing, putting together material for a museum exhibition about Dylan's life in Minnesota. She says Hibbing has a funny relationship with Dylan.

COLLEEN SHEEHY: Some people really don't care. They don't get why people love Dylan so much and are curious and want to go to his hometown. I think there's also a feeling that he rejected Hibbing, and he left Hibbing, and he hasn't come back and made any big pronouncements about this town made me. So they feel a little resentful about that. But then there are people like Bob and Linda Hockin and some others who really understand Dylan's importance.

JIM BICKEL: Bob Hocking and his wife, Linda, owned Zimmy's Restaurant in Hibbing. It's a shrine to Bob Dylan. The walls are filled with pictures and memorabilia. And each year around his birthday, they sponsor Dylan Days, an art celebration and a tribute to the man and his music. Dylan has a standing offer to perform at the festival. He's never taken them up on it. Bob Hawking still holds out hope that one day, he'll surprise them.

BOB HAWKING: My dream is that he would come back. And as his last-- his Never Ending Tour ends, it would end at the Hibbing High School, where it began, in his high school. When they had the high school convocation, he did a Little Richard. It would be a dream come true if he came back and he played his last concert at Hibbing High School.

[BOB DYLAN, "MISSISSIPPI"]

Every step of the way, we walk the line Your days are numbered, so are mine. Time is piling up, we struggle and we scrape. All boxed in, nowhere to escape. City's just a jungle--

JIM BICKEL: You've been listening to Boy From the North Country, Bob Dylan in Minnesota. With production assistance from Curtis Gilbert and Megan Molteni, I'm Jim Bickel.

[BOB DYLAN, "MISSISSIPPI"]

I was raised in the country, been working in the town. I've been in trouble since I set my suitcase down. Ain't got nothing for you, I had nothing before. Don't even have anything for myself anymore. Sky's full of fire, and the pain is pouring down, there's nothing you can sell I'll see you around.

All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime could never do you justice in reason or rhyme. There's only one thing I did wrong, stayed in Mississippi a day too long.

Well, the devil's in the alley, a mule's kicking in a stall. Say anything you want to, I heard it all. I was thinking about the things that Rosie said. I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie's bed.

Walking through the leaves falling from the trees. Feel like a stranger nobody sees. So many things we never will undo. I know you're sorry. I'm sorry, too.

Some people will offer you their head and some won't. Last night, I knew you. Tonight, I don't. I need something strong to distract my mind. I'm going to look at you till my eyes go black.

Well, I got here following the Southern Star. I crossed that river just to be where you are. Only one thing I did wrong, stayed in Mississippi a day too long.

Well, my ship's been split to splinters. It's sinking fast. I'm drowning in the buzzing, got no future, got no past. But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free. I got nothing but affection for those who sing with me.

Everybody's moving if they ain't already there. Everybody's got to move somewhere. Stick with me, baby.

Anyhow, things should start to get interesting right about now. My clothes are wet, tight on my skin. Not as tight as the corner that I've painted myself in. I know that fortune is waiting to be kind, so give me your hand and say you'll be mine.

The emptiness is endless, cold as the clay. You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way. There's only one thing I did wrong, stayed in Mississippi a day too long.