Bob Dylan's literary roots may be as tangled as the Nobel Prize winner's famously enigmatic lyrics, but at some point they invariably end up in the Hibbing High School classroom of B.J. Rolfzen. MPR’s Dan Kraker profiles the teacher and his future music icon student.
TOM CRANN: Well, today the world is honoring Bob Dylan not for his music, but for his words. The legendary songwriter was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature today. Dylan was born in Duluth and spent most of his childhood in Hibbing on the Iron Range. Our reporter Dan Kraker went out looking for Dylan's literary roots in North country.
DAN KRAKER: In calling around Duluth and Hibbing today for reaction to Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for literature, people kept talking about a man named BJ Rolfzen, a former English teacher at Hibbing High School.
AARON BROWN: Early in his career, he had a student named Robert Zimmerman who sat in the front, row right in front of where he taught.
DAN KRAKER: Aaron Brown teaches communications at Hibbing Community College. And for 13 years, he co-chaired the Dylan Days Festival in Hibbing.
AARON BROWN: And he was this gentle man who loved poetry and preached poetry almost like a religion.
DAN KRAKER: Robert Zimmerman, who later, of course, changed his name to Bob Dylan caught that religion in 10th grade English class. Linda Strobak was a friend of Rolfzen who died in 2009. For nearly 30 years, she owned the restaurant Zimmy's in Hibbing.
LINDA STROBAK: He just was magic. You could see where someone like a young Robert Zimmerman coming from here to have BJ teaching him poetry and literature would be inspired and create his own language and poetry.
DAN KRAKER: Rolfzen was also witness to the first time Dylan showed his rock and roll side at a talent show at Hibbing High. He told that story to Heidi Holtan of KAXE Northern Community Radio in Grand Rapids.
B J ROLFZEN: He Was beaten on this piano and then the curtain closed. So I went back to my room, and he came about five minutes later and sat down in his chair again. And he looked at me-- I remember distinctly he looked at me with a smile on his face.
DAN KRAKER: Rolfzen later learned the principal had pulled the curtain on him because, in his view, he didn't consider it music. Rolfzen taught English in Hibbing for 30 years. First at the high school, then at the community college. And for years, he would politely speak to journalists, filmmakers, and fans who yearned to hear stories of a Young Dylan.
SPEAKER: When people would come here and say, aren't you proud of Bob Dylan? He would say, I'm proud of all my students, and he meant that. But right now, if he knew-- and hopefully he does know that this happened, that this Nobel Prize was awarded to Bob Zimmerman-- he would be beyond tickled. He wouldn't believe that it could happen, and he'd be thrilled.
DAN KRAKER: Dylan considered Rolfzen a mentor and would visit him when he came back through Hibbing, says Nelson French, who grew up in Hibbing just a block away from the Zimmermans. French now lives in Duluth where he helps put on Dylan Fest.
NELSON FRENCH: The other thing too is that his words touch us with great feelings about humanity. You start off desolation row with their Selling Postcards of The Hanging.
[BOB DYLAN, "POSTCARDS OF THE HANGING"]
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.
And I think all of us in Duluth now know what that was about. There was a lynching in the 1920s of three Black men who were traveling with the circus just off of Superior Street.
DAN KRAKER: Duluth and Hibbing have long had a complicated relationship with the famous musician. He's rarely spoken of his childhood. So local fans cling to references like in Desolation Row or Highway 61 Revisited.
Duluth has designated a Bob Dylan cultural pathway through the city and host Dylan Fest. But in Hibbing, there's little to indicate Dylan's past there. Zimmy's closed two years ago and Dylan Days disbanded the following year. But Aaron Brown hopes the Nobel Prize may spark a renewed interest in the homegrown musical icon.
AARON BROWN: Because really, what this award is is just an acknowledgment of the global impact of this guy from Hibbing who really changed the music industry, changed the act of songwriting, made it more personal, made it more artistic, and a really great opportunity for the Iron Range and Duluth to claim their most famous son.
DAN KRAKER: Or as Linda Strobak puts it, "the award shows how, out of somewhere, very unexpected came someone who could put words to all our feelings." Covering the arts, I'm Dan Kraker. Minnesota Public Radio News. Duluth.
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