Home Town News the Weekend Robert Zimmerman Was Born

A couple weeks ago I went to the library to see what was in the news the weekend Robert Zimmerman came into this world. The microfilm reader is linked to a computer setup in which you can create screen grabs, then email them to yourself. It's all pretty heady stuff.

Front page of Duluth News-Tribune on May 24, 1941.

* * * * 

Front page middle section. (click to enlarge)

* * * *

This was the following day's front page above the fold.

* * * *

You can see why there are so many accordion players here in the Northland.

We live in polka country. Can you tell?

Check out Dylan's polka-jive version of  "Must Be Santa"

It would have been fun to be an extra in that video.
What do you think?

* * * *

A review of Disney's Fantasia, a film that was older than I'd realized.
Still a cult classic and a rewarding experience today.

* * * *

This movie starlet reminded me of images on some of the 

backstage passes Bob used circa 2002-2004.

You can find examples here or just take my word for it.

(Or "just ask me and I'll show you the stars.")

* * * *

This last was a most interesting discovery from looking through two days of 1941 Duluth newspapers. Minnesota became a state in May 1858. The Civil War would break out three years later. And that May 24-25 weekend's newspaper had a story about the oldest living Confederate soldier in Minnesota in May 1941.

As nearly every Duluth Dylan fan already knows, Albert Woolson--who became the last surviving Union soldier, was living in Minnesota as well, just a handful of houses around the corner from Robert Zimmerman's first home on the Central Hillside. The Zimmerman's moved to Hibbing when Bob was 6. Woolson added several years to his life here, passing in 1956.

* * * *

Related Links
Photos from The World of Accordions Museum in Superior
The Albert Woolson Statue Here at the Start of Bob Dylan Way
Duluth Dylan Fest Schedule

Duluth Dylan Fest begins Saturday at Karpeles.
If you see me, say hello.

Serendipity, the Duluth Armory and a Dylan Fan from Germany

Tuesday afternoon I got a call from Visit Duluth asking if I might be available to give a tour of local Dylan sites to a journalist from Germany who had just arrived fir the day. I just happened to be downtown when the call came and we arranged to meet at Amazing Grace, a coffeehouse in Canal Park's DeWitt-Seitz Building. I was waiting at a table when our faithful Visit Duluth liaison Maarja Hewitt arrived with our Deutschland guest Christoph Moeskes in tow.

Moeskes is editor for a German travel publication called America. He's also an avid Dylan fan, and having the opportunity to tour a bit of our Minnesota North Country was an opportunity he didn't want to miss. The meeting place was selected somewhat randomly inasmuch as our purpose was simply to find a connecting point and then tour a few sites beginning with Bob Dylan Way.

Fate intervened, however, with a few quick, simple twists. First, Tuesday was an open mic afternoon for the Music Resource Center (MRC), under the auspices of the Armory Arts and Resources Center (AARC). The AARC is tied to the Duluth Armory where young Robert Zimmerman saw Buddy Holly perform in one of his last concerts. The first duo to perform on stage included Tristan Espamer and Manny Eisele, Manny riffing a white electric guitar with Tristan on bass. The usic has a Santanaesque quality, only missing the eccectic percussion accompaniment. Manny was the son of local artist Carla Hamilton, who grew up in nearby Wrenshall, left home at 18 and ultimately lived in Stuttgart for 18 years. Returning to the States in 2012 she has been an active force in the local art scene.

As soon as I mentioned this to Christoph and Maarja, Carla herself came in and sat down at the next table, whereupon I called her over and introduced her to our guest from Germany. I thought it would be a nice touch for Christoph and Carla to exchange a few words in German. For laughs I shared three sentences I know from junior high German class.

Then, another twist of fate occurred. Mark Poirier, head of the AARC, arrived for the MRC open mic event. We introduced Christoph and he invited us to take a quick tour of the interior of the Armory, a rare and unexpected opportunity for sure. The planned ride along Bob Dylan Way would be moved to the last part of the two hour tour.

The Duluth Armory was built in 1915 and has a storied history. In 1918 a great fire consumed as many as 35 communities on the south and west outskirts of Duluth. The Armory served as a shelter and meeting place for families that were separated. And for the decades afterward it became a cultural hub for entertainers and public speakers including Bob Hope, Harry Truman, Liberace, The Supremes, and most significantly for Dylan fans, Buddy Holly.

A site recognized on the National Register of Historic Places, there has been a hardworking board comprised of volunteers striving to save the structure and fulfill a vision to make it a significant resource again for the community.

Check out this 1935 audience that came here to hear the symphony.

Mark Poirier (left) discusses Armory status with Christoph Moeskes.

(L to R) Ed Newman, Christoph Moeskes, Maarja Hewitt

And so with an open door Mark Poirier ushered Christoph, Maarja and I were into the Drill Hall, where troops once practiced digging fox holes, where masses gathered for entertainment, where rural refugees found consolation after that tragic fire. Standing there before the stage one is immediately struck by all the history that has been made here. It seemed you can still feel the presence of those echoes from time past.

We then slipped up to the Green Room, that staging area where performers prepare for going on stage. The dilapidated walls hardly diminish the feeling one gets from knowing that Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, Johnny Cash and so many others each waited here, tuning their guitars, assembling their "game face" and pulling themselves into a presence that would take the stage. And what a big stage it was, large enough to contain an orchestra, which it did at one time.

Mark and Christoph enjoyed an engaging conversation throughout. 

Bob and his family lived upstairs.

OUR NEXT STOP was the duplex where Abe and Beatty Zimmerman lived upstairs when they brought young Bobby home from the hospital. St. Mary's hospital is only a few blocks from the Zimmerman home which is on 3rd Avenue East a half block above 5th Street. Christoph took photos and looked for the plaque, which he enjoyed.

While driving on Fourth Street Christoph and I both agreed that Duluth should rename it Positively Fourth Street. I went so far as to suggest we rename Highway 61 as well... Highway 61 Revisited.

We worked our way to the Duluth Depot where Bob Dylan Way commences. We stopped at the first intersection to give our guest an opportunity to take a photo of the Dylan-themed manhole cover there, then we tucked our vehicle between the buildings to crawl along the passageway which ultimately leads from the Depot to the Armory.

I broke off at this point, appreciative of the opportunity share a few moments with our European visitor. His next stop was to be Hibbing, where the Zimmermans moved with six-year-old Bob and brother David 1. Christoph started the adventure in Minneapolis, taking in a number of sites there including the impressive six-story-high Dylan mural adjacent to Hennepin Avenue. The editor planned to head over to Bemidji from Hibbing before returning to the Twin Cities to make his departure.

Christoph... Thank you for making time to visit with us here. We look forward to the stories you share about America, in America.

Related Links
The Historic Duluth Armory
Items of Note Regarding the Historic Duluth Armory
Christoph Moeskes' magazine, America

REMINDER: The Potter & Potter Houdiniana auction begins at 10:00 a.m. You can follow along in real time and also bid if registered. Details here.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Get into it.

Marketing Heaven's Door: Bob Dylan's Foray into the Whiskey Business

The masters of every field of endeavor set themselves apart by the attention to detail. As the saying goes, ideas are a dime a dozen. A good idea and a buck will get you a cup of coffee. For true artists it's all about execution, and attention to detail.

This past week Bob Dylan introduced a new line of whiskey called Heaven's Door. As a career marketing guy I was immediately struck by how nearly perfect this new product launch has been executed. What follows are some of my observations about this latest turn in the Dylan saga.

THE LANDING PAGE
In digital marketing parlance, a landing page is a section of a website accessed by clicking a hyperlink on another web page, typically the website's home page. It enables digital advertising to direct prospects to a specific location that is uncluttered by other messages so the page can address the task at hand: selling.

For this reason, you do not direct whiskey prospects to the Home page because they might be confused there, seeing (at this moment in time) a large photo of Dylan during his Gospel phase with arms raised, singing about Jesus and preaching the Word. In a little while the BobDylan.com home page will feature his next Bootleg Series, Volume 14... but for now we have Trouble No More "above the fold" as it were.

The landing page at Dylan's website, itself a first-class, content-rich website, has numerous special features that could be used as a textbook example of how to roll out a new product line. Let's examine this page and see what it tells us.

First, you see a fantastic action shot of a grinder throwing sparks serving as a backdrop to the beauty shot featuring the gorgeous packaging on these three new lines of whiskey. The industrial image has direct ties to Dylan's roots, raised as he was on the Iron Range, as well as to his late-in-life attraction to metal sculpture, constructions made from discarded iron that had no doubt been mined from the red iron mining pits of the Northland. Note the lighting as well. This was not a photo generated in Photoshop. It was meticulously crafted and lit so as to amplify the richness of the products themselves. You can almost taste it.

The designs on the bottles are Dylan's welded ironwork gates, serving as graphic elements as distinctive as the "Bat's Over Barstow" imagery that Ralph Steadman generated to define Hunter S. Thompson's look. The design not only pops, it also resonates with lifelong themes associated with Dylan's work. Workingman's Blues #10 comes to mind, as does North Country Blues.

THE NAME
And then there's the Name. What a perfect name. All of Dylan's ambiguity is contained in this product name, as it implies Heaven on Earth, but could imply Death's Door, another brand of spirits. After a lifetime of hearing Dylan sing "Knock knock knockin' on Heaven's Door" every Dylan fan will hear the echoes in this name. A line from a much later song also comes to mind... "I'm trying to get to Heaven before they close the door." (Time Out Of Mind, 1997)

THE LOGO

Cropped and rotated.

That logo has panache, is likewise a primo design. Every company has its company colors. Twitter is associated with Blue. MacDonald's has its bright yellow Golden Arches. A number of companies have the classic All-American colors of red, white an blue. Dylan's gold is a burnished gold set against a black background that bespeaks of richness, thereby connecting with the flavors he's inviting you to experience. The logo design also has the feel of antiquity, implying ancient secrets involved in the development of these concoctions.

THE HEADLINE
Scroll down a few inches and the announcement appears, uncluttered and straightforward: Heaven's Door Whiskey Is Here. It has arrived. As if we've been waiting for it all our lives, even though most of us never knew it was even coming.

THE STORY
Below the headline we have another fabulous image, and an endorsement by Mr Dylan himself. "We wanted to create a collection of American whiskeys that, in their own way, tell a story."

Let's break this down. The roots of modern advertising go back to Claude Hopkins' classic Scientific Advertising, a ground-breaking book on advertising that changed the face of modern advertising. What's the story? What is the unique selling proposition? What's the story?

Not only does the Heaven's Door product line itself have a story that flows out from Dylan's "American experience" dug up from American soil, but each of these unique products in the product line has a story, he tells us.

One of the features of Dylan's songwriting has been his storytelling ability. "Tangled Up In Blue" immediately comes to mind, as does "Scarlet Town" as does "Hard Rain."

Story telling is as old as humanity. The Exodus. The stories of the Patriarchs. "God said to Abraham..."

We're still working our way down the page here because the quote is in the upper left corner of a photo of Mr. Dylan reading a book, glass in hand, lit by a single light from above. He is attentive to what he is reading and, by the way, has a great drink in his hand. He's wearing his trademark bowtie, white shirt with black buttons, seemingly oblivious to the photographer, the studio, the outside world, enjoying a pair of diversions. It is a picture that itself tells a story.

The photo is 47kb so that the page loads fast. Digital marketers know that the longer the image takes to load, the more likely web surfers will leave beforehand, resulting in high bounce rates. The photo is just one more piece of information in the sale. It must load fast and communicate quickly, and this one does. It's beautiful. The chair is leather and like everything here it's chic, speaks of class.

THE SALES COPY 
This is advertising copy. It has only one aim: to draw you in and to encourage you to follow the three links at the bottom of a relatively short page. It's one paragraph in length, "right on target, so direct."

Heaven’s Door – a collection of American Whiskeys developed in collaboration with Bob Dylan and renowned craft distillers, will be available in May. Years in the making, the inaugural trilogy of expressions includes a Tennessee Straight Bourbon Whiskey, Double Barrel Whiskey and Straight Rye Whiskey finished in oak barrels from Vosges, France, air-dried for 3 years. The perfect blend of art and craft, each bottle showcases Dylan’s distinctive welded iron gates that he created in his metalworking studio, Black Buffalo Ironworks.

Robert Zimmerman in The Hematite, his high school yearbook.
The kid done good.

Power words include American, trilogy, Bob Dylan, renowned craft distillers, Tennessee Straight Bourbon, Double Barrel, Straight Rye, oak barrels from Vosges France, air-dried for 3 years, perfect blend, distinctive, and Black Buffalo Ironworks.

That's it. And then we have links. The first goes to the Heaven's Door website, which immediately corresponds to the look and feel of this intro page. Here we have almost no words at all, a story in pictures, which if you scroll through lead you to beautiful close up shots of the three products, below which are two options--"Read More" or "Order."

The URL is memorable: HeavensDoor.com. No doubt the marketing team had to purchase this URL since such a great name would not have been lying idle. I suspect, too, that whoever owned it was paid well for this piece of web real estate. I know a couple people who in the earlier days of the Internet would purchase URLs as investments to later sell for a profit. It's one of the ways Capitalism moved into cyberspace.

The second link jumps to a New York Times article about the new product line titled Bob Dylan's Latest Gig: Making Whiskey. The article includes a pair of publicity shots that are clearly staged but aim to look "natural." The latter features Heaven's Door executive Marc Bushala and Ryan Perry who are the actual people running the Heaven's Door enterprise. The article, based on information the Heaven's Door marketing team generated to help inform media, also has the appropriate measure of authenticity to feel like a news story and not a straight up puff piece, though to some extent a cynic could see it this way.

The final link takes you to a New York Times taste test by Clay Risen. (First thought: Is this a stage name? I mean, the "first Adam" was made of clay and we're talking here about Heaven's Door, opened by the "Second Adam.") But a quick Google search reveals that Risen is a pro journalist specializing in this category, has written about spirits for The Atlantic, Smithsonian and The Washington Post. Risen is a serious taste tester who knows the lingo, no doubt enjoys discovering all the nuances in a blend. ("The palate opens with a soft cocoa and buttercream note, then sharpens toward black pepper and cigar tobacco.")

* * * *
The Four P's of Marketing
If you've ever studied marketing in school or been in marketing yourself, you're no doubt familiar with the 4 P's of marketing: Price, Product, Promotion, Place. It waits to be seen how the rest of the rollout will unfold, but the look and feel of these initial paces has a measured classiness that's not entirely out of line with Dylan's persona. It waits to be seen how the product will be rolled out in the B2B marketing so that it ends up in stores. What we have here is the essential prep and PR.

This Grub Street article is a dialogue between four taste testers giving their own impressions of what these three whiskeys are like. It's a fun read, but it begins with a reminder that Dylan is not the first celeb to introduce a high end line of spirits. There's a hint of cynicism in some of the comments. For example, one taste tester says, "It doesn't seem like something he would do." And later, one says they thought Bob was more of a wine guy.

All this begs the question, what is the probability of success here? The odds are pretty good.

The initial response amongst Dylan fans may have been surprise, but not uncool. It's authentic enough to feel like Dylan, to reflect his character, both his roots and what he's become. It's not hard to imagine a certain number of Dylan fans purchasing the products even if they're not whiskey drinkers, just to have it in their liquor cabinets.

As for the photos, though, I can't help but think of the photo shoot in Sofia Coppola's Lost In Translation with Bill Murray as a fading superstar endorsing a whiskey.

If nothing else, it has people talking.

RELATED LINKS 
Product, Price, Place, Promotion: The Four P's of Marketing
Bob Dylan: Content Marketing King 
The Bob Dylan Marketing Machine
Forbes: Music Icon Wins Rave Reviews for His Luxury Spirits
The Forbes & Grub Street links were found at ExpectingRain, courtesy Laura Leivick  

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Engage it.

Almost Wordless Wednesday: Hibbing High School -- Swell to Great

When built, the Hibbing High School auditorium, where a young Robert Zimmerman performed two brief concerts in the 1950's with his first two bands, boasted a Barton pipe organ, one of only two in the United States, purchased from the Chicago Vaudeville Theater in 1920 at a cost of $26,000. Until 1928 when a student was injured in a fall and the mechanism thereafter disabled, the organ manual rose on a cylinder piston to bring the organist to stage height. With three manuals arranged in a horseshoe shape, the original Barton was known as a 12-rank organ that produced sound through 1,900 pipes hidden in closets above the two box seats. The current organ, rebuilt in Milwaukee and converted after reconstruction in Hibbing to a concert organ in 1976 by Norbert Berschdorf, now uses 1,949 pipes varying in size from one inch to sixteen feet in height to give the organ a 29-rank range. With over 100,000 working parts, the organ can reproduce sounds as varied as bird whistles, tom-toms, xylophones, and tambourines -- essentially any musical instrument except the violin -- with the sound projected from behind the diamond shaped panels above the side boxes.*

 *Information about the organ courtesy Nelson French, 1970 graduate of Hibbing High.

Another Feature of This Year's Duluth Dylan Fest: Rare Photos and Documents from a Private Collection

About a month ago we posted a tentative outline for events to be held during Duluth Dylan Fest this coming May. The Duluth Dylan Fest is rolling in fast, and some of this year's new events are looking to be exceedingly special. One of these is a collection of rare documents and photos that will be on public display at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum. Some, if not many, have never been seen before. It's a truly remarkable gift to the Dylan fans who visit here to celebrate Bob's 75th birthday the last week of May.

The source of this generous contribution to this year's Dylan Fest is the Bill Pagel Archives. Serious Dylan fans have been long acquainted with his BobLinks website which gathers and shares Dylan concert reviews, setlists and links from nearly the beginning of his touring career. (Eager to learn where Dylan will be next, visit Boblinks.com.)

I first learned of the site when I posted a Dylan concert review on my own website in 1998 and it turned up there afterwards. In addition to being a collector, he is also a historian and researcher, though no real collector worth his salt is going to collect without a deep understanding of valuations, thus requiring that one become a dedicated researcher. His enthusiasm for collecting all things Dylan garnered him chapter one status in David Kinney's The Dylanologists.

Celebrations will be occurring in various locations in various parts of the world that week, no doubt. (I just received notice of a 75th birthday party in Oregon, for example.) The fact that this is Duluth's native son makes this event unique in many ways. If you join us, here are some of the places you may wish to visit as seen in a clip from the Smithsonian on How Robert Zimmerman Became Bob Dylan.


One highlight for many will be the time spent at Karpeles. Here are a few of the items you might enjoy.

Sheet Music for Chimes of Freedom with Dylan’s writing over the music 1964
Written over the sheet music for the song, Dylan signs and dates, doodles, and quotes part of one verse of Chimes of Freedom, which appeared on Another Side of Bob Dylan

Newspaper Advertisement for Golden Chords first paid performance 1958 
Robert Zimmerman had a music group while in Hibbing called the Golden Chords. This newspaper advertisement is from their first paid gig. It was at the National Guard Armory building in Hibbing, MN. The Golden Chords were comprised of Monte Edwardson on guitar, Leroy Hoikkala on drums, and Robert Zimmerman (Dylan) on piano. They played during the intermission of a sock hop. The performance took place Saturday, March 1st, 1958.

1965 Dylan Acetate Recordings 
Unlike ordinary vinyl records, which are quickly made by a mass-production molding technique, an acetate disc is created by using a special machine to cut the groove into the surface of a special lacquer-coated blank disc. This is a real-time operation requiring expensive equipment and expert skill for good results. They are made for special purposes and almost never for sale to the general public. They may have been used as "demos" of new recordings by artists or record labels, or simply to allow the artist to bring the recording home to listen to.

Camp Herzl photographs 1957
Early teenage photographs of Bob Dylan are very scarce. Here are two photographs of Robert Zimmerman during his visits to Camp Herzl in Wisconsin.

A teenage Robert Zimmerman attended Camp Herzl, near Webster, Wisconsin during the summer. The first photograph, taken in June of 1957 at Camp Herzl, shows a young Zimmerman holding a guitar, and to the left and right of him two life-long friends. Also pictured are Paul Black, who is furthest to the back in the photo. Farthest to the right is Dave Unowsky. We are looking to identify the person farthest to the left in the rear.

Dylan’s first solo concert flyer Nov. 4th, 1961
Before recording his first album in November of 1961, Dylan played in coffeehouses and clubs around the village. This flyer is from Dylan’s first solo New York concert. Izzy Young, owner of the Folklore Center, promoted the show and lost money on this venture. Bob performed the show at Carnegie Chapter Hall on Saturday November 4th, 1961.

Robert Zimmerman on motorcycle with Dale Boutang 1956  
Dale was “the best rider in Hibbing, a cowboy on wheels and a seasoned weight-lifter.” Dylan and Dale are pictured here with Boutang’s Harley 74, 1956. The photograph was taken by Beatty Zimmerman, Bob’s mother, in front of the Zimmerman home at 2425 E. 7th Street in Hibbing, Minnesota.

* * * *

And this is only the beginning. The rarest I am not even permitted to talk about.
To stay current with announcements and dates, visit the Duluth Dylan Fest Facebook Page.

Photo Credits
Top Right: Dylan portrait by local artist Moira Villiard
Lower Photo: Mural in Haight-Asbury district, circa 2008

The Dylan-Woolson Connection

The Albert Woolson statue in front of the Depot.

For years I've been going to events at the Duluth Depot that houses the Duluth Art Institute, Historical Society, Train Museum and Playhouse. It's strange to think that all this time I've walked past this statue that sits out front without ever wondering who it was or why it was there. This summer I decided to check it out and learned that it's a Duluthian named Albert Woolson, who at the time of his passing was the last living veteran of the Civil War.

He was young when he entered the service, only 15, as a drummer boy in Company C, 1st Minnesota Heavy Artillery Regiment. When he died in 1956 Life magazine ran a seven-page story about our last connection to that war between the states. (You can read more at Wikipedia.)

This summer I took photos of the Woolson statue intending to write a blog post about this man when Saturday, at the 100th anniversary of the Duluth Armory, Don Dass of the Dylan Way Committee told me the most fascinating anecdote about how the kids in the Central Hillside would parade past the elderly Woolson's home each year. What makes it intriguing is that young Robert Zimmerman lived just a couple houses down the alley from Woolson and had almost certainly been part of that children's parade. Here's Don's account along with a map showing the Zimmerman home and its relation to the Woolsons:

Hand-drawn map shows relationship of the two homes.

"A few years ago during Dylan Days I heard a story from a woman who owned an art gallery in Canal Park. She had gone to kindergarten with Robert Zimmerman at Nettleton and she said it was the tradition for students to parade past Albert Woolson's house on either Veterans Day or on his birthday. (She couldn't remember which it was.) I thought that was a remarkable coincidence even before I read the November 11, 2015, article about Woolson in the DNT and noticed a picture of him standing outside his home with a lot of small children gathered before him. I thought of that story I'd been told and realized that here was photographic evidence of those occasions. In reading the piece I came across the address where Woolson had spent his later years -- 215 5th Ave. E. Close to Nettleton and even closer to the Zimmerman home at 519 N. 3rd Avenue E. I had to make a little sketch so I could verify what was just coming together in my mind. Dylan and Woolson lived on the same block, shared the same alley, scarcely a stone's throw apart. I find it almost beyond ironic that the last officially documented survivor of the Civil War and Bob Dylan lived not only in the same smallish city, but apparently actually lived almost next door to one another."

Young Robert Zimmerman lived upstairs here till age 6

Now here's something cool. If you use Google Maps here's what you will see when you do the "Street View".  (Mr. Woolson lived on the East, or right, side of the brick duplex.) Now, if you turn to the right and go to the end of the block, then make a left, go up the hill to the alley and look left, there's the house where young Dylan lived the first six years of his life. The alley referred to above is on the left side of this house.

Next May if you're in town for Dylan Fest, and the celebration of Bob Dylan's 75th birthday, you might enjoy taking a side trip up the hill to this house and that alley alongside it.... remembering that the oldest survivor of the Civil War lived his last years "a stone's throw away."

Is it possible these early memories of the old Civil War veteran played a role in Dylan's writing Cross the Green Mountain for the Civil War trilogy Gods and Generals?

Bob Dylan - "'Cross the Green Mountain" (from the Gods and Generals soundtrack) from Balint on Vimeo.

Items of Note Regarding the Historic Duluth Armory

The life of Dylan is one of legends. The man himself has become something of a mythological figure during the course of his lifetime. One of the signature stories in that legendary life is his trip to Duluth to hear Buddy Holly at the Duluth National Guard Armory the last evening of January 1959. Three days later Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) were dead, killed in a plane crash.

The Armory encounter made an impression on the young Bobby Zimmerman, who referred to it later in interviews as well as in his autobiography. No doubt that tragedy that occurred in an Iowa cornfield three days later made an equally powerful impression. (Read the story here.)

I mention all this because a friend who serves on the Armory board posted on my Facebook wall a link to Zenith City Online noting that this day in 1915 was the official opening of the historic Duluth Armory.

From very early on the Duluth Armory had a stories existence. World War I was in effect, though the U.S. had not fully engaged. Nevertheless the Armory served as home for a full-scale regiment, comprised of the 34th (Red Bull) Division and the 125th Field Artillery.

It didn't take long for the Armory to get put to use and in 1918 our boys joined the Doughboys to engage in a war many people still don't understand. 317 Duluth soldiers lost their lives in Europe as a result.

But the worst was yet to come.

That autumn the Spanish Flu epidemic reached Duluth. The flu was so deadly that on October 8 the city commissioners put the entire city on lockdown. People were forbidden from shopping, going to church or congregating of any kind. It was a city-wide quarantine.

Four days after this edict, the Cloquet Fire hit. When I first visited Hermantown, just over the hill from the rim of Duluth, in the late 1970's I couldn't help but notice that there were no really tall trees. I learned then about the Cloquet Fire. The reality is that the fire burned all the was north around the entire outskirts of Duluth. Innumerable homes were lost, and more than 600 died. People who had gone to work that morning were unable to return home that night, many wondering whether their loved ones escaped or were consumed.

Where did all these people? Most were housed at the Armory and a few other structures where people could be attended to. Unfortunately, the Spanish influenza was in full force, and all these people in one place only contributed to its spread. Over 300 lives were taken by the flu.

As George Harrison once penned, all things must pass, and certainly these dark clouds of 1918 ultimately lifted for a season.

For more information:
dulutharmory.org/about/
My 2013 Armory Update

Historic Armory Post Card is from the informative Historic Duluth website Zenith City Online. Thank you, Tony, for your invaluable caretaking of Duluth's history.

Information about our tragedies of 1918 came from a presentation y Dan Hartman at the recent Libations at the Library event here in Duluth.

3 Weird Things You Probably Never Knew About Bob Dylan, Plus 3 Highlights of 2013

Disclaimer: Anyone who has been on the Internet for any length of time has seen those weird banner ads using the word "weird" in them. I have always thought them bizarre, but evidently they must work because advertisers continue to use them and since it is all being measured (clickthroughs, conversions, etc.) you know they wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't getting results. So... for the fun of it, I decided to use the word here in the title of my last blog entry of 2013. Weird, huh?

Here are three weird things you probably never knew about Bob Dylan.

1. When she was in school in Hibbing a girl who later grew up to become the mother-in-law of a friend of mine dated young Robert Zimmerman. (I do not have permission to say more than that, so don't ask.)

2. Several years ago I was at Frankie's Tavern on Tower Avenue, Superior and the young fellow next to me overheard some of us talking about Dylan. He said his father beat up young Robert Zimmerman once when they were in school together. (He lamented that he has always been ashamed of this.)

3. When you re-arrange the letters of Robert Zimmerman, it spells ARMOR BRIM MET ZEN, which is the secret password for an underground sect in Sri Lanka. And when you re-arrange Bob Dylan it spells both BLAND BOY and BAD NOBLY, revealing the two aspects of his dichotomous alter ego.

* * *

On a more serious note, here are my three personal Dylan highlights of 2013.

#3: Most of us have been aware of Dylan the painter. Bob Dylan the sculptor was a new revelation in 2013. In November, Dylan's Mood Swings show opened at the Halcyon Gallery in London.

#2: Bootleg Series Vol. 10, Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) was released in August. I can't remember an album I have played this frequently since... well since Dylan's last album. OK, maybe Together Through Life... If you have a choice between the two CD set and the three CD set, and haven't already bought Another Self Portrait, then get the triple set with the Isle of Wight concert. Very special evening captured live, and memorably historic.

#1: Dylan returns to Bayfront Park in Duluth.
Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour continued to rumble along in 2013. For the third time it rolled through Duluth, the second time in Bayfront Park.

Honorable Mention: It created quite a stir when word leaked that Dylan was under consideration for a Nobel Prize for Literature.

What new direction do you think Dylan will take us in 2014?

Happy New Year!