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SPEAKER 1: You are listening to 89.3 The Current from Minnesota Public Radio broadcasting live today from right outside the Weisman Art Museum, celebrating Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan's road from Minnesota to the world 3-day symposium featuring all kinds of Dylan experts, folks who knew him, know him now, love him, hate him, I guess. I don't know. Maybe that's possible too.

But nevertheless, my next guest is here with me today. He's a gentleman who didn't know it at the time, but he gave Bob Dylan what is, I suppose, his very first musical break right here in our own neck of the woods, only the name of the kid that he met wasn't Bob Dylan, wasn't even Bob Zimmerman, actually. We'll find out what it was in a moment. Nevertheless, Mr. Bobby V. He had a string of international hits in the 1960s, including Devil or Angel, Rubber Ball, More Than I Can Say.

He's here to chat about the very, very early sprouting of Bob Dylan's musical ambitions with us today. Bobby V, welcome to 89.3 The Current.

BOBBY V: Thanks, Steve. Thank you very much. It's great to be here on this beautiful afternoon. My goodness, look at the people. This is great. And for all of you Bob Dylan fans, I just want to go on record as saying, I'm not one of the experts. I'm a big fan. But yeah, it was a moment in time in my life. But I spoke to a lot of experts yesterday.

There's a lot of heavy-hitting Bob Dylan fans here. People should come down. This is a wonderful thing.

SPEAKER 1: But you do have a particular area of expertise that nobody else can have, particular experience that no one else really had. I can't imagine how weird it must have been to have had this particular vantage point on Dylan's career. On one hand, you get to tell these interesting stories. And on the other hand, he wasn't exactly a model band member for the short time that he was with your band.

So tell us the story of how he wound up in your band early on all those years ago.

BOBBY V: Well, it's from the get go it was a funny story. I had a record, a regional record. I grew up in Fargo. So that's where I started. And in June of 1959, we cut a record here in Minneapolis at Kay Bank Studios. It came out on Amos Heilicher's label, SOMA Records.

SPEAKER 1: SOMA Records, yep.

BOBBY V: Went to number 1 here in Minneapolis and the surrounding areas. And we started looking for a piano player. We were a guitar band and bass and drums. And hard to find. My brother was in Sam's Record Land in Fargo. One afternoon, this little guy came up to him and said-- he said, I hear you're looking for a piano player. And Bill said, that's right. He said, well, I just got off the road with Conway Twitty, and--

SPEAKER 1: Total complete lie.

BOBBY V: A total complete lie, but we were pretty impressed at the time. And Bill took him over to the radio station about a block away and had him play the piano. There was a piano in the lobby and he played a whole lo of shaking going on. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You have the left hand just pumping.

SPEAKER 1: OK.

BOBBY V: And Bill freaked out. He said, wow, this good, heavy-handed guy just laying on it. And so he played the first show with us that following weekend. We didn't rehearse and we just picked him up, thought he'd have a piano. He didn't have one. We had a shirt for him. So he was an official member of the band, The Shadows, Bobby V and the Shadows.

SPEAKER 1: He had the uniform.

BOBBY V: You had to have the uniform. And we were in the basement of a church in Gwinner, North Dakota, and there was an old piano there. So he got to play it. It was totally out of tune, but it didn't really matter because he only played in the key of C. So there was certain limitations there. But I have great memories of him coming up and singing background parts. And he was obviously a very bright guy.

SPEAKER 1: So it was a whole lot of shaking going on there, the only tune that he really could play. That was like his calling card. And beyond that, he was just a bluff beyond that.

BOBBY V: He knew all the songs that we knew. We grew up listening to the same radio stations and the same songs. So he knew the tunes. And he sang along with them and played along as best as he could. And I don't mean to-- we were all young and we were all clubbing away at our guitars and playing.

But we got through the evening and we did three sets and we played a whole lot of shaking on every one of them.

[LAUGHTER]

You'd almost have to.

SPEAKER 1: Was that the only show? Was it just one show?

BOBBY V: No, we did another one, and I can't remember where it was. It was on the border of North Dakota and in Minnesota. But anyway, we paid him $15 a night, which is more money than I could ever imagine spending at that time in my life, 16 years old. And I ran into him in 1990. He came back to the Fargo-Moorhead area and he was playing the Fargo Civic.

And I wrote a letter to him, and my wife and I went in and got there early. And I went backstage and gave it to one of the sound guys that I knew, that I'd worked with, and said, if you see Bob, give him this letter. And he did. Midway through, well, after the opening act that evening, he paged me to come backstage. And I went backstage. We went upstairs and chatted. And just it was amazing. It was like a class reunion or something.

The warmth and the friendship, those magical years when we were teenagers and our friends, were looking for the big star or the big sun or the big moon or looking for all of those things.

SPEAKER 1: I wonder, when you got him up there or when he got up there to talk to him, did he say anything like, hey, man, sorry about all that stuff about pulling your leg about being a piano player, I just needed some experience, I needed a break. Or was it just like, hey, good to see you.

BOBBY V: He kind of has said that in print, that he was looking at it as an experience. He wanted to play. He was a rock and roll contender, even then just starting out. And at that age, we all were. Rock and roll was brand new at that time. And so to be able to be in a rock and roll band playing for an audience, that was pretty special.

SPEAKER 1: When did you first get wind that this kid who was starting to make all these rumblings in New York and across the country and everything as being this folk music voice of a generation and all that was the same kid who was in your band? By the way, we never said what his name was because he used this crazy name in your band. What was that?

BOBBY V: Well, he introduced himself to Bill at the record shop as Bob Zimmerman, but he said, but the name I want to use on stage is Elston Gunnn. Elston Gunnn with three N's, G-U-N-N-N.

SPEAKER 1: Was that not a tip off to anything there?

BOBBY V: Oh, man, that was-- yeah, we should have known.

SPEAKER 1: Right.

BOBBY V: Three N's.

SPEAKER 1: There's something going on there. But nevertheless, yeah, when you first saw that this was the guy that was becoming this international sensation, did you realize, oh my god, that's the kid. Or had you known all along that's where he'd gone?

BOBBY V: No, I didn't know. I knew that he was in New York because we had done a Murray the K Show at one of the big holiday shows and we saw him in the audience. We were in Staten Island. He was sitting like in the fourth row or something like that. Saw him in the audience and I thought, my god, there's Zimmerman. And we talked to him briefly after the show. But it was sometime after that that I was in Greenwich Village and I looked, there was a record shop and I was looking at the stuff in the record shop.

And there was a picture of this guy. And I turned around and walked away. And then I stopped and went back and looked. I did a double take.

SPEAKER 1: Yeah.

BOBBY V: My god, that looks like Zimmerman. He showed up again. And of course, it was. It was Bob Dylan. That was his first album.

SPEAKER 1: Do you still think of him as Zimmerman today?

BOBBY V: No, I don't. I'll tell you, it's such an honor for me to be part of this symposium here at the Weisman. I'm a fan too. We all are. We're all in the music business and we're all fans. And I love his music, and I'm not an expert about it. I don't care about being an expert. But his contribution to the world of music, and it certainly is the world of music, has been immense. And I'm proud to be here just to be a ripple in the wave.

SPEAKER 1: Sure. Well, we're very proud that you came by. And thanks so much for talking with us today.

BOBBY V: Pleasure. Thank you, Steve.

SPEAKER 1: Really nice having you here. Mr. Bobby V, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for stopping by.

BOBBY V: Thanks.