Robert Zimmerman and his ventriloquist dummy Peco’s Pete, Christmas 1950 “AT CHRISTMAS OF 1950 I scored really big! I not only got an HO gauge Peco Train Set, I also got my ventriloquist dummy that I named “Peco’s Pete”, that’s us on the left. He and I wore almost-matching flannel shirts. Sadly, or maybe for the better, my ventriloquist act didn’t go over too well: Pete was getting all the laughs, so I decided to break up the team and let him go his own way. The last time I heard from him, Pete was somewhere in Verona, Italy playing a benefit at a retirement home for old ventriloquists.”
Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016, a stunning announcement that for the first time bestowed the prestigious award on a musician for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
Bob came out with his own brand of whiskey...... Jimmy had the best time watching a private performance from the Big Apple Circus with Bob Dylan...or did he?
A LOOK BACK..... Nobel Prize Committee Defends Bob Dylan At Award Ceremony "In a brief speech that was read at the Nobel Banquet on Saturday, Dylan said, essentially, that he was too involved with his music to accept the award in person." "He said that Shakespeare wrote for the stage not the page, and would have found the question of whether his work was literature absurd—he was too busy finding the right actors, rehearsing the plays and financing the performances." “Like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life's mundane matters. ‘Who are the best musicians for these songs?’ ‘Am I recording in the right studio?’ ‘Is this song in the right key?’ Some things never change, even in 400 years." “Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, ‘Are my songs literature?’” So it was left to the Swedish Academy’s literary historian Horace Engdahl to defend the committee’s decision. “He gave back to the language of poetry its elevated style, lost since the Romantics,” Engdahl said in a speech introducing Dylan’s award. “Not to sing of eternities, but to speak of what was happening around us. As if the oracle of Delphi were reading the evening news. Recognizing that revolution by awarding Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize was a decision that seemed daring only beforehand and already seems obvious.” "In the face of claims that Dylan was a cheap choice for such a hallowed honor, Engdahl hailed the Minnesota-born songwriter for beating the smart set at its own game—taking an idiom discarded ages ago by the cultural intelligentsia and changing the world with it."
Bob Dylan wins rock's first Pulitzer Prize BrooklynVegan Staff | April 9, 2008 “This year’s Pulitzer Prizes in honored two musical innovators who tend to reject categorization: A special citation went to singer-songwriter Dylan, and the annual music award went to composer and Los Angeles native David Lang.” [Chicago Tribune]